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ABSTRACT
The Holocene epoch in geological history of the last 10,000–12,000 years has given way to a new geological epoch which natural scientists are calling the Anthropocene, marked by humanity’s emergence as the main driver of change in the Earth system as a whole, threatening the future of civilization, a majority of ecosystems on the planet, and the human species itself. From a historical-materialist perspective, this planetary emergency constitutes a crisis of civilization. Human civilization arose in the relatively benign environment of the Holocene. In contrast, the Anthropocene is an epoch of increased ecological constraints and dangers, marked by what has been called the Great climacteric, objectively requiring the creation of a new more sustainable society, or ecological civilization. The making of such an ecological civilization is closely linked to the long revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism.
Acknowledgements
This is a revised version of a talk, “The Anthropocene and Ecological Civilization: A Marxian View,” presented in Eugene, Oregon on May 2, 2016, in honor of visiting scholars from China. It was organized as part of the Tenth International Forum on Ecological Civilization, Claremont, California, April 2016, under the auspices of the Institute for Postmodern Development of China. Many of the participants in the international forum in Claremont traveled to Eugene for this presentation, which was included as an extension of that conference. The author would like to thank Zhihe Wang, Meijun Fan, Jordan Besek, and Intan Suwandi for their roles in making all of this possible. He would also like to thank Brett Clark for his help and encouragement in the revising of the manuscript.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
John Bellamy Foster is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, and editor of Monthly Review (New York). His books include The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism (1986, 2014), The Vulnerable Planet (1994), Marx’s Ecology (2000), Ecology against Capitalism (2002), Naked Imperialism (2006), The Critique of Intelligent Design (with Brett Clark and Richard York, 2008), The Ecological Revolution (2009), The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff, 2009), The Ecological Rift (with Brett Clark and Richard York, 2010), What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism (with Fred Magdoff, 2011), and The Endless Crisis (with Robert W. McChesney, 2012)—all published by Monthly Review Press; and Marx and the Earth (with Paul Burkett, 2016)—published by Brill.
Notes
1 Civilization is often taken to mean an advanced, ordered society. The historical meaning of civilization, as understood within socialist thought, however, is much more complex and will be addressed in the following analysis.
2 In referring to an Earth-system crisis (or planetary emergency) the intent of course is to refer to a crisis of society (and to some extent life as it now exists) arising from the anthropogenic rift in the Earth system, rather than literally a crisis of the Earth system itself, which naturally supersedes society.
3 Wark (Citation2015) has described the coming of the Anthropocene epoch as associated with a “series of metabolic rifts” (xiv). On planetary boundaries and the anthropogenic (metabolic) rift (see Rockström et al. Citation2009; Foster, Clark, and York Citation2010, 13–19).
4 Given prevailing realities in the capitalist world, an ecological revolution would need to occur in two phases: (1) an ecodemocratic phase based on a broad popular alliance, aimed particularly at energy transformation (though taking on other issues as well); and (2) an ecosocialist phase aimed at the formation of an ecological civilization, or a far-reaching transition to a socialist ecological formation (Magdoff and Foster Citation2011, 124–44; Foster Citation2015c, 10–12; italics in the original).
5 Sweezy’s outlook in 1989, in the context of capitalist economic crisis, growing global ecological degradation, and the destabilization of post-revolutionary societies, was fairly grim. “In this situation,” increasing planetary environmental peril, he wrote,
the prospect of an indefinite continuation of capitalism—a capitalism in crisis to boot—is truly terrifying. Civilization as we know it cannot survive even what a short while ago would have been considered historically a brief span of time. Socialism, if it misses out this first time, will likely never get a second chance. (Sweezy Citation1989b, 6)
6 These historical distinctions with respect to the concept of civilization are not meant to set aside—especially in the historical-materialist view—the reality that some pre-capitalist societies lacking all of the above characteristics, such as the traditional Iroquois culture with its advanced form of government, were in some respects more cohesive and cultured—less “barbaric” or brutal, and less unequal—than the colonizing societies that putatively sought to “civilize” them. In classical Marxism, traditional, pre-capitalist socio-economic formations were often seen as exhibiting more communal forms of social organization, which, if still existing in an undeveloped state, nonetheless prefigured social structures which would re-emerge in more advanced modes in socialism. It was for this reason that Engels (Citation1972, 147–61), together with Marx, displayed such high respect for the Iroquois and for other traditional societies.
7 The above passage is often translated as “civilization . . . leaves deserts behind it” (Bahro Citation1994, 19).
8 The science behind the potato blight—its proximate cause in the form of Phytophthora infestans was only isolated in the 1860s by the German plant pathologist Anton de Bary—was poorly understood at the time Marx was writing. Yet, despite this, it was obvious to Marx that the potato blight, which had affected countries throughout Europe, and engendered mass starvation in Ireland, was related, in the Irish case, to the destruction of what had earlier in the century been a more diverse agriculture, leading to the absolute dependence of the poor tenant farmers in the colonial system on potatoes (a monocrop) for their subsistence. The potato was seen as allowing the Irish peasants to eke out a bare existence on the worst land, consisting of tiny plots, and with little fertilizer, while the major commercial agricultural produce of the country controlled by the colonial plantations was being exported, primarily to England. For Marx, the deficiencies of the entire agricultural system were thus quite clearly related to the overexploitation of the land in a colonial setting (see Fraser Citation2003; Schmidt Citation2015).
9 Mumford was of course not referring here to the superiority of Western civilization but rather to its irrationality, and its potential catastrophic planetary effects.
10 Recently the emphasis on mainstream theory in the face of growing catastrophic environmental events has come to emphasize the “resilience” of individual societies, seeking to remove any responsibility from states in the center for addressing ecological devastation in the periphery. For a critique of how resilience theory has evolved in this respect, see Cox and Cox (Citation2016).
11 Moore subsequently realized that his claim that “nearly half” the world’s population was malnourished was exaggerated and in reiterating this in almost identical words a year later changed “half” to “third” (Moore Citation2015b, 19).
12 Today the phrase “Ecosocialism or Barbarism” is frequently heard (Kelly and Malone Citation2006; Angus Citation2014). This is a call for a socialist ecological civilization as opposed to an anti-ecological, and anti-social barbarism.
13 Following the 1983 publication of Philosophy and the Ecological Problems of Civilisation, it appears that vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, P. N. Fedoseev (also Fedoseyev), who had written the introductory essay on ecology and the problem of civilization in the above-edited book, incorporated a treatment of “Ecological Civilization” into the second edition of his Scientific Communism (Fedoseyev Citation1986; see Ursul Citation1983a; Pan Citation2014, 35; Gare Citation2015; Huan Citation2016, 2).
14 Soviet ecological thought in this period was influenced by the nuclear winter thesis, which projected the possible demise of the biosphere as a result of nuclear exchange, and which was a by-product of the research on climate change by Mikhail Budyko and others (Budyko, Golitsyn, and Izrael Citation1988, v–vi, 39–46). This was seen as linked to the whole ecological problem in a way uncommon in the West.
15 For an analysis that explains how ecological science and the critique of political economy can both be drawn upon in order to develop a conception of ecological civilization, in which socialist and ecological principles reinforce each other, see Magdoff (Citation2011).
16 On the question of optimism versus hope see Eagleton (Citation2015).
17 Oreskes and Conway (Citation2014, 69) indicate that the reason that they chose a Chinese historian from the twenty-fourth century to tell the story of “the collapse of Western civilization,” and depicted China as the civilization that survived climate change, was in order to emphasize the importance of government regulation and government intervention, which had largely disappeared in the neo-liberal West, but not in the so-called “authoritarian societies.” In the circumspect language of liberal ideology this was meant as a reference to planning.
18 One dramatic exception to this was Cuba, which in the face of the collapse of the Soviet bloc managed to keep its own revolution going by taking a more revolutionary ecological path. This has best been explained by Lewontin and Levins (Citation2007, 343–64).
19 China has been playing the leading role worldwide in the development of solar power technology. The proposal of the State Grid Corporation in China to build by 2050 a $50 trillion global wind and solar power grid, called the Global Energy Interconnection, has attracted enormous attention. According to the World Economic Forum, China is proposing to construct wind farms in the North Pole and solar farms at the equator crossing international boundaries, and conceivably accounting for the majority of the world’s energy generation, superseding fossil fuels (Baculinao Citation2016).
20 A significant factor here is the very wide extent of environmental protest in China today, pushing the society towards more radical solutions to ecological problems (Foster and McChesney Citation2012, 179).
21 The principal basis for the notion of an environmental proletariat is Marx and Engels, and can be seen particularly in Engels’s Condition of the Working Class in England (Citation1993), which concentrates on the overall environmental conditions of the working class, and sees that as constituting the basis for revolutionary action. However, Toynbee’s notion of an “internal proletariat” (as well as an “external proletariat”), characterized by “alienation from the dominant minority,” representing much of the creative power of any given civilization, is also useful here (Toynbee and Somervell Citation1946, 12; Foster Citation2015c, 11–12).