File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 284


Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 10:59:37 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Work in Progress, Part 3


Nancy Brumback:
>In general, since in the 1st World most of the natural resources of been
>used up, most of the surplus value which is derived from nature originates
>in the 3rd World. And since the workers of the 1st World are much more
>highly paid than the workers of the 3rd World, most of the surplus value
>which is derived from labor originates in the 3rd World. The 1st World
>performs an important function in the global economy, however, for workers
>there provide the market for 80% of the world's production of consumer
>commodities, and thus keep world capital in circulation. 
>

Jim Devine hasn't gotten back to me. I just may go ahead and scan his
damned article from the journal tonight and post it.

Meanwhile, here's my own two cents and I am by no means a value theorist.
The problem we seem to be dealing with is that Marx focuses on wage labor
in order to expose the concealed nature of exploitation in the "free"
market. In feudalism, the exploitation was highly visible. The serf worked
x days for himself and y days for the lord. Under capitalism, this is
disguised through the wage. The boss gives the worker x wages and the
worker produces x+y. The y is only realized when the commodity is exchanged.

The question of nature is secondary to Marx only because in itself, it is
not a commodity. He is concerned with commodity production.

Now James O'Connor has attempted to update Marxism with his "second
contradiction" theory, which tries to account for contradictions that exist
beyond the point of production. They were only implicit in Marx. Meanwhile,
David Harvey has attacked this theory, but only implicitly, which is too
bad. In his latest book, he trashes ecosocialism and defends what I view as
a very sophisticated form of "workerism." There is a barely concealed
contempt for "green" issues that don't directly affect the health of
workers. Harvey simply doesn't get aroused by species extinction, for
example. I plan to read and review Harvey's book as soon as I am finished
with my articles on the American Indian and Marxism.

Meanwhile, here is what I wrote about O'Connor a while back:

*********

Dogmatic Marxism tends to sneer at green politics as reformist. After all,
if Vice President Al Gore can write a book called "Fate of the Earth" that
incorporate a number of environmental themes, how anticapitalist can the
green movement be?

In discussing the particular problem of cattle-ranching, it is not to hard
for most list members to see that it is extremely destructive to precious
resources such as soil, water and vegetation. Capitalist exploitation of
these resources in order to provide cheap beef to the population of the
advanced capitalist nations threatens to upset ecosystems that preserve all
life, including human life. While in the process of upsetting ecosystems
that took thousands of years to develop, capitalism also destroys the lives
of campesinos who are expelled from precious land. That land which can
produce corn and beans for the downtrodden of the South is instead used to
satisfy the craving for beef in the North.

James O'Connor, the founder and editor of the journal "Capitalism, Nature
and Socialism", has traveled farther in developing a Marxist critique to
these problems than any other contemporary thinker. His has articulated a
theory of the "second contradiction of capitalism" that explains why
environmental degradation is an integral element of capitalism today and
not subject to reformist solutions.

In an essay "Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible" that appears in a
collection "Is Capitalism Sustainable" edited by Martin O'Connor (no
relation), he defines both the first and second contradictions of capitalism.

The first contradiction is generated by the tendency for capitalism to
expand. The system can not exist in stasis such as precapitalist modes of
productions such as feudalism. A capitalist system that is based on what
Marx calls "simple reproduction" and what many greens call "maintenance" is
an impossibility. Unless there is a steady and increasing flow of profits
into the system, it will die. Profit is the source of new investment which
in turn fuels technological innovation and, consequently, ever-increasing
replacement of living labor by machinery. Profit is also generated through
layoffs, speedup and other more draconian measures.

However, according to O'Connor, as capital's power over labor increases,
there will be contradictory tendency for profit in the capitalist system as
a whole to decrease. This first contradiction of capital then can be
defined as what obtains "when individual capitals attempt to defend or
restore profits by increasing labor productivity, speeding up work, cutting
wages, and using other time-honored ways of getting more production from
fewer workers." The unintended result is that the worker's loss in wages
reduces the final demand for consumer commodities.

This first contradiction of capital is widespread throughout the United
States and the other capitalist countries today. No amount of capitalist
maneuvering can mitigate the effects of this downward spiral. Attempts at
global management of the problem are doomed to fail since the nation-state
remains the instrument of capitalist rule today, no matter how many
articles appear in postmodernist venues about "globalization".

The second contradiction of capital arises out of the problems the system
confronts in trying to maintain what Marx called the "conditions of
production". The "conditions of production" require three elements: *human
labor power* which Marx called the "personal conditions of production",
*environment* which he termed "natural or external conditions of
productions" and *urban infrastructure*, the "general, communal conditions
of production".

All three of these "conditions of productions" are being undermined by the
capitalist system itself. The form this takes is conceived in an amorphous
and fragmented manner as the environmental crisis, the urban crisis, the
education crisis, etc. When these problems become generalized, they
threaten the viability of capitalism since they continue to raise the cost
of clean air and water, raw materials, infrastructure, etc.

During the early and middle stages of capitalism, the satisfaction of the
"conditions of production" were hardly an issue since there was apparently
an inexhaustible source of natural resources and the necessary space to
build factories, etc. As capitalism reaches its latter phase in the
twentieth century, the problems deepen until they reach crisis proportions.
At this point, capitalist politicians and ideologues start raising a public
debate about the urban and environmental crisis (which are actually
interconnected). 

What they don't realize is that these problems are rooted in the capitalist
system itself and are constituted as what O'Connor calls the "second
contradiction". He says, "Put simply, the second contradiction states that
when individual capitals attempt to defend or restore profits by cutting or
externalizing costs, the unintended effect is to reduce the 'productivity'
of the conditions of production and hence to raise average costs."

O'Connor cites the following examples: Pesticides in agriculture at first
lower, then ultimately increase costs as pests become more
chemical-resistant and as the chemicals poison the soil. In Sweden
permanent-yield monoforests were expected to keep costs down, but the loss
of biodiversity has reduced the productivity of forest ecosystems and the
size of the trees themselves. A final example is nuclear power which was
supposed to reduce energy costs but had the opposite effect. 

If capitalism was a rational system, it would restructure the conditions of
production in such a way as to increase their productivity. The means of
doing this is the state itself. The state would, for example,  ban cars in
urban areas, develop non-toxic pest controls and launch public health
programs based on preventative medicine. 

Efforts such as these would have to be heavily capitalized. However,
competition between rival capitalisms, engendered through the pressures of
the "first contradiction" (in other words, the need to expand profits while
the buying power of a weakened working-class declines), destroy the
possibility for such public investment. As such possibilities decline, the
public infrastructure and the natural environment continue to degrade. Each
successive stage of degradation in turn raises the cost of production.

It is the combination of these two contradictions that will mark 21st
century capitalism. Marxists have to be sensitive to both and devise ways
to mobilize workers and peasants in a revolutionary struggle to abolish
these contradictions once and for all.

 
Louis Proyect



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