In the first volume of this comprehensive work, we explored, with Alain Bihr, the various theaters of the ongoing climate catastrophe. With extensive scientific explanations of the degradation of the natural environment, Bihr's main objective was to demonstrate the systemic nature of the Holocene upheaval, effectively marking our entry into an unknown geological era. He was careful to remind us that no alternative could emerge from capital, presenting how attempts at ecological intervention by public and private powers in this area were nothing more than a vast deception. In this second volume, Alain Bihr explains why it cannot be otherwise.
Bihr had already pointed out that Marx's work lacked a systematic analysis of the role of the natural environment in the dual relationship of exploitation that unites capital and living labor in the daily course of the expanded reproduction of this mode of production. He therefore proposes that we return to this three-way interplay between capital, human labor power, and natural matter, in order to enrich Marxist materialist thought and demonstrate that no struggle with ecological aims can disregard the social relation of capitalist exploitation, and vice versa.
The expropriation of producers or the great separation
It is by examining the modes of production preceding the advent of capitalism that we can understand its historical singularity. In a brief diachronic allusion to capitalist development, which he has already extensively discussed in his remarkable description of The First Age of Capitalism (Syllepse, 2018), Bihr recalls the conditions that made this mode of production possible. The first of these conditions was, of course, the separation between the means of production and the producers through private property. The enclosure movement in England during the 16th and 17th centuries is the best-known example.
Whereas previous modes of production systematically associated producers with the means of production, sometimes even transforming producers into means of production within the framework of slavery, the Great Transformation identified by Karl Polanyi corresponds to the commodification of land and labor power, a single operation which will have the effect of creating what Marx ironically called "the free worker".
At this point, the working class, whose labor power is initially the property of the entire capitalist class before being the property of any particular employer, is condemned to meet the demands of capital in order to reproduce itself and thus reproduce the conditions for the expanded reproduction of the entire system, which cannot survive without living labor. Indeed, only the difference between necessary labor (equivalent to wages) and surplus labor (equivalent to surplus value) constitutes the increment of value added to the initially invested capital. This is the foundation of capitalist accumulation. If accumulation ceases, crisis ensues.
While Karl Marx's focus was rightly primarily on the relationship between the capitalist class and the proletariat, this great separation undoubtedly had a major anthropological impact on the symbiotic unity of the time between man and nature.
To study this rupture in the original symbiotic unity, Bihr first revisits the foundation of the transformation of matter in the human species. He reminds us that this involves identifying the ways in which human beings interact with one another in their relationship to nature, which they use to reproduce a given society. It is from this definition that we can systematically integrate the concept of nature into the dialectic of capitalist relations of production. By separating producers from their means of production, capitalism has brought about a transformation of associated worldviews, notably the advent of scientific thought, which, as we shall see, has paved the way in many respects for the intentions of the capitalist mode of production. It took time and strong social pressures to arrive at this idea that nature confronts us.
To define this rupture of symbiotic unity, Foster, an author who has greatly contributed to highlighting the ecological contributions of Marx's work, put forward the concept of "metabolic rift," an expression used only once by Marx, to describe the decoupling of the relationship between man and nature within the framework of capitalism.
For Bihr, the exaggerated nature of the fault line, sometimes presented as a complete rupture, prevents us from understanding the relationship that capital establishes with nature. He artificially describes an absolute separation, whereas from a materialist perspective, considering the natural elements of the human species and the various necessary exchanges involved in the metabolic reproduction of the natural and human social substrates, introducing a total estrangement between the two, through a rupture-based conception of the relationship, is first and foremost false and secondly politically sterile.
Bihr explains Foster's error as stemming from the latter's analytical focus on the single moment of expropriation, on this separation between producers and means of production. We find the same analytical errors in the use of the concept of a reserve army, recently enshrined in the concept of "overpopulation" viewed as absolute, which, in certain radical interpretations, tends to equate a mechanism of capitalist reproduction with a definitive breakdown. Just as the reserve army is merely a proletarian variable destined to be exploited sooner or later under degraded conditions, nature, despite the symbiotic rupture represented by capitalism, is not a mere bystander ready to defend itself. The concept of "abstract nature," which Bihr will return to at the end of this volume, should instead illustrate how non-human material forces are assimilated by capital within the framework of its reproduction. Therefore, there is no fault or break between man and nature, but a radical transformation of both human beings and nature by capital.
At the heart of the machine
Marxist contributions to the analysis of the ecological catastrophe have never sufficiently integrated the problematic relationship between nature and capital as value in process, that is, from the perspective of its valorization process. Yet, this process presupposes the commodification of the constituent elements of the production process-labor power, certainly, but also all the elements that contribute to the production of value. The metamorphosis of the status of natural elements is therefore just as crucial. Here, we are not talking about the use-value of the natural substrate (drinking water to quench one's thirst) but rather about value in the capitalist sense of the term (selling water to make money), a value that is autonomous and embodied in daily life by monetary symbols and materials.
To correct this misconception, Bihr proposes examining the driving force of the MPC (Model of Production and Compensation), namely the subordination of the labor process to the valorization process, within which nature, defined as an active agent, is also subordinated, and therefore transformed. Bihr's contribution is refreshing because it applies the concept of subsumption, as a proven logic of classification (Marx's most effective in my view), to the phenomena of nature's appropriation.
In Chapter VI, or the unpublished chapter, Marx offers a diachronic and synchronic view of the appropriation of labor by capital. The subsumption of labor under capital is the way in which capital, in its valorization process, uses labor power to produce additional capital. This is, strictly speaking, the heart of capitalism. Without additional capital, capitalism is meaningless. The sole objective of this mode of production, for the capitalist class, is to make money, with money, in order to enrich themselves and dominate.
Marx identifies three phases (diachrony) or three modes (synchrony) of the appropriation of labor by capital:
* First, there is subordination, characteristic of mercantilism, in which emerging capital simply appropriates the products of labor, arranging the terms of exchange to be favorable to it in order to profit from them. The most developed elements of this process exist in what has been called the putting-out system, where workers labored from their homes for an employer who provided the means of production and the raw materials necessary for the labor process. As the only outlet, the employer could easily exert pressure on piece-rate wages and profitably resell their merchandise on the market. In another, more peasant-based configuration, a large part of the colonial economy also relied on this principle, centered around raw agricultural products.
* To define the "generally" capitalist mode of production, Marx uses the concept of the formal subsumption of labor under capital. This time, the labor process is formally subsumed, brought together in one place, with a wage-earning workforce (paid by the hour, no longer by the piece) and private ownership of the means of production by the capitalist engaged in the valorization process. Marx describes it as formal because capital, since its rationality of economic optimization, has not yet been able to reorganize the labor process. Consequently, the same manufacturing methods are retained, the division of labor is limited, and so is labor productivity. We are operating on a principle of absolute surplus value. This system quickly loses its effectiveness since working days are inherently limited.
Through competition, workers' struggles, and scientific discoveries heavily influenced by capitalist logic, capital manages to break down labor into tasks and increase the productivity of those tasks with the help of machinery. This has the effect of increasing the rate of surplus value, and therefore the exploitation of labor power. By ensuring greater productivity, capitalists bring cheaper and more numerous products to market. This is not done out of the goodness of their hearts. It is what Marx called the real subsumption of labor under capital. This process allows for the reduction of the value of labor power, which corresponds to the proletarians' subsistence basket, through relative surplus value. This corresponds in particular to the famous Fordist period, which is presented to us, in the countries of the historical core of capitalism, as the advance hand in hand of capital and the working class. This has in reality resulted in the fierce repression of revolutionary movements in all corners of the world, under the bullets of both domestic and foreign armies, and in the globalization of capitalist relations of production under degraded conditions. We are still in this situation today.
It is this framework that Bihr will attempt to apply to the appropriation of nature in order to understand how capital has also modified this active agent in the production process. The objective is to understand how capital conforms nature to its concrete abstraction, which is value, in the same way that it conforms the workers' actions in the labor process. It is capital's indifferent stance, as value in process, toward these sources of energy and embodiment of the commodity, that formulates its fundamentally contradictory relationship with nature.
Here, Bihr, while presenting the moments of appropriation diachronically, reminds us, like Marx, that the modes described, taken in isolation, can very well exist simultaneously, depending on the needs of expanded reproduction. We will take the fictional example of water energy to try to illustrate this point (any resemblance to agricultural bosses who grow corn to feed American cattle would be purely coincidental):
* First, there is informal appropriation. This is when nature appears only as a free gift that contributes to the conditions of possibility for accumulation, without needing to be transformed to integrate it into the production process, like an abundant source of water energy in a perfectly accessible riverbed. There is then only externalization (nature is understood as a positive externality) and subordination of the water element to the needs of valorization.
Formal appropriation involves internalizing natural problems in the face of conditions that no longer allow nature to be considered a free gift. Indeed, the source of water energy, once drawn directly from the river, is no longer available due to the drying up caused by the river's numerous diversions. Several employers are vying for control. The capitalist machine must then identify the natural phenomenon as a process that needs to be mastered in order to optimize the production process. Capital must invest to benefit from the energy. It will probe the underground watercourse and the various aquifers, drill, and install a pump and piping to continue its production process. Capital then partially emerges from the scavenging it was engaged in during informal appropriation, because natural conditions are integrated into the commodity cycle and, in fact, acquire value. Indeed, the boss has to pay for the water, that is, the means of accessing water to ensure the prosperity of his business. There is no transformation of the natural phenomenon. The boss still relies on a source he does not control. Since nature is now valued, the aim is to devalue it as much as possible by ensuring maximum use to make the business profitable. What we are then witnessing is more of a kind of outright plundering, and plastic tarpaulins shaped like basins appear everywhere in the region as private pantries.
* Real appropriation, which corresponds to the specifically capitalist mode of production, changes its modality:
"The real appropriation of nature by capital will consist, on the contrary, in seeking to adapt the very materiality of natural resources as closely as possible to the requirements of capital valorization (Bihr, L'Ecocide capitaliste, vol. 2: p. 127)."
The goal, therefore, is to exploit the potential of raw nature by developing its decomposition and mastering its constituent elements. We shift from an extensive and predatory vision to an intensive one, much like in labor. The objective is now to decompose natural elements to access the fundamental processes of raw nature and direct energy into the machinery system. Aided by SpaceX (Elon Musk's nightmare company), the local agricultural federation has missiles loaded with silver iodide manufactured to burst the clouds before they reach their neighbors. In exchange, they are simply asked to buy shares in a SpaceX subsidiary, which is about to produce sufficient quantities of water in the laboratory, a process initially intended to supply the first city on Mars. This was without taking into account the damage silver iodide inflicts on the ecosystem. After a few rotations, it becomes impossible to grow anything in the area. The SpaceX subsidiary closes and the small agricultural businesses in the region find themselves ruined on all fronts.
The appropriation of nature as a means to achieve profit.
Real appropriation, as real subsumption, is the only phase that truly revolutionizes the use of the active agent that is the natural substrate. The objective is clear: to increase productivity, accelerate capital turnover, and strengthen the production process so that it is not subject to the vagaries of "negative externalities."
To illustrate this trend, Bihr uses the Olympic motto to classify the different ways of forcing nature: citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher, stronger):
* The first concerns forcing nature to produce something it doesn't produce spontaneously. Here, he focuses particularly on the agricultural industry and all the work of domestication: separating species, standardizing seeds, eliminating pests, separating the biological process from its environment, and disrupting biological rhythms.
* The second concerns forcing nature to produce something it doesn't produce spontaneously. Here, he discusses artificial materials such as metal alloys, concrete, plastics, semiconductors, GMOs, synthetic fabrics, and even transhumanism.
* A third modality of real appropriation consists of artificially reproducing a new "socio-nature," that is, a natural substrate entirely reconstructed by capitalism, for capitalism. We are talking here about all the reconstructed reserves, such as wetlands and forest monocultures, which still exist as financial assets, directly or indirectly, and which are nevertheless presented to us as the ultimate heritage solution for "preserving nature."
Bihr uses the transformation of corn cultivation as an example to illustrate the combination of three methods: seed standardization, sterilization, and genetic modification. The real appropriation is the exploitation of nature for the benefit of capital to produce a specifically capitalist socio-nature.
Capitalist hubris
Before defining this socionature adapted to the concrete abstraction of capitalist value, Bihr wishes to revisit what he calls capitalist hubris, a section intended to make it clear to everyone that capital has no other goals than accumulation and that this primary objective determines everything else.
Capital is an endlessly expansive process within a material context that itself has concrete limits. Without the capacity to control the social production generated by a system based on the private ownership of the means of production and the resulting impossibility of coordinating the necessarily contradictory, because competitive, interests, capital will never be able to meet the needs and limitations that do not correspond to its thirst for accumulation.
This structurally expansive system makes it impossible to control the development of productive forces, which inevitably leads to aberrant resource extraction. Indeed, socially necessary products are only determined once production has taken place. Ultimately, it is the market that determines the success of any given commodity. Thus, production is controlled ex post, or after the fact. The waste is certainly monumental, but the configuration of the mode of production allows for no alternative. As long as the market prioritizes utility, there can be no other way. Dreaming of state capitalism, which the left dresses up in the trappings of "ecological planning," will change nothing, since this fractal pattern is also replicated at the level of geopolitical interests, through our cherished borders.
Bihr provides a concrete example of responsibility for the damage caused by climate change. Although this change is indeed recognized as originating exclusively from the states of the Global North, these states refuse to compromise their profit margins and interests to maintain their position. Fair play is not in vogue, and they demand the same efforts from countries of the Global South in the fight against global warming.
At the micro level, the same pattern is replicated. Company management has power over its means of production, provided that their exploitation results in the expected increase in the value invested. The only guiding principle is the accumulation of capital.
From a technical standpoint, these characteristics lead to a necessarily frenzied productivism. Capital's power of abstraction has made it possible to coordinate, through financial power, a series of capitalist operations without the capitalist(s) at the head of these enterprises being compelled to any form of physical presence. This is the culmination of the separation between the means of production and the producers. Lacking unity, the two elements are now variables that the capitalist manipulates at will through the power of money, for the sole purpose of reinforcing that power. Only the crisis of overproduction, and its attendant destruction, brings about the dreaded final judgment.
Far from being a series of bad decisions, these are the rules of the game, as Marx reminds us, quoted by Bihr:
"Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes the constant increase of capital invested in an industrial enterprise a necessity, and competition compels each individual capitalist to submit to the external constraint of the immanent laws of the capitalist mode of production. It forces him to continually expand his capital in order to preserve it, and he can only expand it by means of progressive accumulation." (Marx in ibid., p. 269)
To win the market, production costs must be lowered by revolutionizing the labor process to increase capital productivity. This revolution also ensures direct confrontation with workers. This is why real subsumption is a characteristic of a specifically capitalist mode of production. It also allows for the maintenance of a reserve army of labor, sidelined by productivity gains, whose existence ensures workforce flexibility and plays a significant disciplinary role in the daily course of capitalist production.
Increased productivity inevitably impacts the ecological footprint, and this impact is not proportional, as expanded reproduction is both extensive and intensive. Given the limitations of raw materials, the energy required to extract them is greater.
The counterpart to overproduction is overconsumption. Consumption patterns are imposed, leading to major disruptions for the population. This is how we end up with countless stores filled with disposable textiles while the housing crisis rages and public services essential for population growth are severely depleted, with the exception of the police and the military.
Planned obsolescence ensures a satisfactory turnover of capital. We are taught to throw things away and buy new ones. And companies in sector 2 (consumer goods), particularly monopolies, spend fortunes on marketing, the "effort to sell," to better ensnare us. The impoverishment of social life condemns us to project our desires onto artificially valued goods, the reflection of a world of objects.
At the same time, manufacturers ensure that production processes lead to rapid wear and tear on goods. Washing machines, light bulbs, printers, software: their lifecycles can be artificially determined. A recent example is the transition to Windows 11, which left countless computers unusable with the end of support for Windows 10. This is an example of an oligopoly's ability to control its turnover. Our social life is impoverished, sometimes defined exclusively by our relationship to ephemeral goods, caught in the web of commerce with no other way out.
This unlimited growth poses an unsustainable challenge to the Earth system. Bihr provides some benchmarks. If we start with an annual growth rate of 2%, the system's needs double in 35 years. They triple in 37 years at an annual growth rate of 3%. They quadruple in 35 years at 4%. They quintuple in 33 years at 5%. It is impossible for a quantity to grow infinitely in a finite system. No amount of adjustment-neither the so-called immaterial economy, for which residents of regions hosting data centers bitterly observe the false promise of immateriality, nor the circular economy, an operation that aims to make us responsible for a reproductive cycle we do not control, nor energy sobriety-will allow capitalism to adapt its functioning to the rhythm of the Earth, or rather, to adapt the rhythm of the Earth to its accumulation needs. This mode of production is doomed to the prospect of short-termism and a headlong rush into capitalist competition.
Abstract Nature
"If every mode of production is also a production of nature, then capitalism must be understood as generating a specific socionature." (ibid., p. 337)
What, then, is this capitalist socionature? Bihr proposes defining it as an abstract nature, a concept initially borrowed from Jason Moore in his definition of capitalism as "world ecology." The author offers us a synthesis of how capital relates to nature, shaping it not only to its own use but also to its own image. It is from this effort at synthesis that we will understand that nature, far from being an immaculate by-product, is precisely the result of the use this system makes of it.
The use of nature for the reproduction of the human world is not unique to capitalism. The transformation of nature is, in fact, characteristic of the human species and the foundation of the various artifacts that have allowed the species to prosper. Moreover, it is not exclusively human. But in capitalism, this relationship is now purely instrumental, obliterating all other dimensions of this relationship (ethical, aesthetic, mystical, religious, etc.). We are thus witnessing an anthropological reductionism whose objective is to eliminate all obstacles to capital accumulation.
This process leads to reification, or in other words, "objectification." Reification begins with an externalization of the workings of nature through an experimental scientific approach that freezes so-called natural laws to produce knowledge capable of profiting from the observed processes within the framework of nature's appropriation by the production process. By examining the various stages of the emergence of modern scientific thought, we observe that the articulation, even the synchronous nature, of this development with capitalism is evident. In this context, we understand that the initial great separation is also embodied by scientific thought, which drew inspiration from capitalist production models to propose concepts such as mass, energy, and information, and which ultimately defined nature as a unified entity obeying its own laws that must be instrumentalized to achieve the desired social ends, in this case, accumulation. The systemic conception (cybernetics, structuralism, systems theory), characterized by the automation of the production process, completes this development, at least for the time being, with the advent of agentic AI.
While the core of the specifically capitalist conception of socionature is constructed within the production process, the circulation process also plays a role, since it is this process that embodies the effective (de)valuation of nature through commodification. The culmination of commodity fetishism arrives with fictitious capital, equivalent to loan capital. Regardless of the "securitized" commodity, the same interest rate can be applied, thus achieving the capitalist ideal A-A'. In this way, everything, including fragments of nature, can become hosts to the value form, as exemplified by the carbon market discussed in the first volume.
Nature's value-form implies its privatization, alienation, and transformation according to market demands, thereby entailing processes of individuation, typification, isolation, and measurement, like any commodity. It has to fit the box to be sold. Market valuation leads to the devaluation of that box. Nature becomes a concrete abstraction, like any commodity, through market exchange, under the principle of general equivalence. Everything must be able to have a value. The dictates of circulation provide the guidelines for the renewal of the production process with the aim of expanded reproduction.
Nature, now abstracted, is liable to suffer the same fate as living labor. Bihr reintroduces the concept of vampirism, articulating reification and (de)valorization. As a reminder, vampirism rests on a double determination: it feeds on its prey but, in doing so, it imparts its nature to its prey, transforming it into a vampire. This is the essence of subsumption, which has transformed labor power, while feeding on it, into dead labor and an appendage of that dead labor. According to Bihr, we can apply the same schema to nature. Indeed, capital appropriates it as force and matter put to work, but, in doing so, it transforms it, notably through knowledge, into a concrete abstraction capable of joining the dead elements of the production and reproduction process.
This is how he concludes the second volume, with a successful gamble: having applied the critical materialist method of analyzing capitalism in its relationship to nature. By refocusing the debate on this issue, he makes a crucial contribution to future struggles. If we consider the specifically capitalist socio-nature, the fetishization of an immaculate, alternative nature offers no leverage for addressing the heart of the problem. Ecological and social struggles do not coexist. Their foundation is inseparable from capitalism, whose sole driving force is accumulation, leaving behind the disasters of an undeniably deadly world, devoid of any sorting. The end of the world is the end of the month. The end of the month is the end of the world. And there is no reason why capital should call it quits on its own.
Mich
The review of the first volume appeared in the May issue of Courant Alternatif.
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4743
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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