Relationship human society/nature, productivism

Outline

The development of the capitalist ecological crisis

Humans produce their existence through social contacts

Labour, as a conscious activity, transforms natural resources into use values

1. Causes of the ecological crisis

    Technological system is destructive?
    Population growth destroys nature?
    Reconsider the relationship with of society with nature in a concrete historical and social context

2. Marxist concepts explain the productivist nature of capitalism

    Use value and exchange value 
    Production of exchange value becomes independent of human needs
    General aim is accumulation of capital
    Competition between capitals is necessary
    Result is permanent increase of production and constant growing environmental degradation

3. Short history of the development of capitalism

    Enclosures movement in England
    Farmers expulsed form their land: landless poor will become later the proletariat in factories
    Separation of country side and towns
    Capitalist dynamics of accumulation spread over the world
    Industrialisation in 19th century is the cause of an erupting ecological crisis
    Mercantilism: plundering of natural resources and genocides in colonies
    First monocultures of export crops
    New slave based economy put in place
    Industrial revolution based on factories in cities and on burning of coal for steam engines
    Growing differentiation in agriculture
    Intensified destruction of tropical forests
    The fertility crisis and its solution chemical fertilisers
    Second industrial revolution : discovery of oil and mechanisation based on electricity
    New sectors in 20th century: car industry, petrochemicals, aeronautics, farming and building engines
    Agribusiness: pesticides and chemical fertilisers; GMO’s
    New materials such as  plastics, pesticides growing poisoning of all ecosystems

4. New global problems emerge in the 1970’s

    Hole in ozone layer: problem solved by regulations not by market forces
    Global warming caused by greenhouse gasses: most dramatic and urgent problem 
    Neoliberalism worsens the ecological crisis
    Capitalist pseudo-solutions

5. Necessity of an ecosocialist alternative