From the ‘right to the city’ to the right to the planet

Abstract

The debate on emancipatory socio-spatial change can be by no means only a matter of ‘right to the city’ − not even within the framework of the Lefebvrian concept of ‘the urban’ (l’urbain), whose scope is wider than is usual. I believe this implies meeting the challenges of reflecting deeper and with more sophistication on how to practically overcome the following aspects of reality: 1) the state apparatus and statism (be it properly capitalist or ‘socialist’) as well as the institution called ‘political party’ and all hierarchical, bureaucratic and vertical modes of collective organisation; 2) the technological matrix and the spatiality inherited from capitalism; 3) the capitalist ideology of ‘economic development’ (somewhat shared, albeit in a distinct and recontextualised way, by typical Marxism with its economism and productivism), full of economistic, Eurocentric, teleological and rationalist presuppositions. At the end of the day, what is at stake is the right to the planet, which requires rethinking a number of issues regarding spatial organisation (pointing out the necessary, radical economic-spatial deconcentration and territorial decentralisation, but without degenerating into parochial localism and self-insulating economic processes), the social division of labour, exploitation and alienation (in the context of which the trends of deterioration and regression such as labour precarisation and ‘hyperprecarisation’ should be highlighted), ethnocentrism (in this regard its renewed facets relating to xenophobia, nationalism and racism must be vehemently denounced), the various types of oppression (class, gender, etc.) and heteronomy in general - all this ultimately examined and judged on the basis of autonomy in the strong sense as the crucial parameter of analysis and evaluation.

Key words:

• right to the city
• dissident territories
• insurgent spatial practices
• ecology
• socio-spatial development

Acknowledgements

First of all, Bob Catterall's encouragement was decisive: the publication of this paper would not have been possible (at least not in its present form) without his editorial support. Additionally, I would like to express my immense gratitude to Andrea Gibbons for very useful criticisms and many stylistic suggestions. She helped me a great deal in formulating some of the arguments in this paper in a more consistent way. The remaining faults are of course mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Born in 1901, Lefebvre joined the PCF in 1928. By that time the party had already demonstrated a distinctly Stalinist orientation and servile obedience to Moscow, a trend that was consolidated at the beginning of the next decade. Despite some tensions with the official party line, Lefebvre remained in party ranks until 1958. It cannot be argued in his defence that ‘there was no alternative’: besides the existing Trotskyist groupings (ideologically less bad than a Stalinist party whose Stalinism was so deeply rooted that in spite of traditionally following orders from Moscow it resisted the de-Stalinisation process begun by Krushchev in 1953), it suffices to remember above all the Socialisme ou Barbarie group (and namesake journal), founded in 1949 by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, who were then heterodox Marxists.

2 I have consulted the following editions: Lefebvre ([1968] 1972a, Everyday Life in the Modern World’s Spanish edition); Lefebvre ([1968] 1991, The Right to the City’s Brazilian edition); Lefebvre ([1970] 1983, The Urban Revolution’s Spanish edition); Lefebvre (1972b, Marxist Thought and the City’s French edition); Lefebvre ([1972] 1976, The Right to the City II—Space and Politics' Spanish edition); Lefebvre ([1974] 1981, The Production of Space’s second French edition). On Lefebvre's long-lasting PCF membership and the ‘dirty jobs’ he was—similarly to several other intellectuals who belonged to Stalinist parties—‘forced’ to do (which ranged from subservient self-criticism to attacks almost ‘ordered’ against party dissidents), it is noteworthy that the entries of Wikipedia dedicated to Lefebvre in French and Spanish are silent on this dark side of his political life. Instead, they give the impression that he had almost always been a champion of resistance to Stalinism. Much more honest is the obituary ‘Henri Lefebvre, 1901–1991', signed by Michael Kelly and published at the beginning of the 1990s, before Lefebvre's quasi-canonisation (Kelly 1992).

3 In The Right to the City, Lefebvre leaves no doubt about it. On the one hand, the working class would be the only class able to make the revolution being immersed in alienation (in other words, submerged in the ‘everyday life', which he largely reduced to the negativity of the ‘bureaucratic society of controlled consumption’), this same working class ‘do not have spontaneously the sense of the oeuvre', but only the ‘product'—hence, the real creation, the true historical emergence of the new would be in principle beyond their range. In contrast, the philosophical (and artistic) tradition would instead be the depository of this ‘sense of the oeuvre’ (Lefebvre [1968] 1991, 144). In other words, the working class would not comprehend the ‘totality’ and therefore would have difficulty in grasping (‘through their own powers alone', to use Lenin's words) that their ‘being’ foreordains them to a ‘historical task'. This ‘sense of the oeuvre’ would come to the working class from outside: namely, from ‘philosophy’. Here is an intellectualised way of repeating Lenin: either the proletariat is guided by Marxist intellectuals (who are the holders of a true sense of ‘wholeness’), who should be working-class ideologues and tutors, or the proletariat come, at maximum, to reformism (‘trade-unionism', in Lenin's words). The long excerpt reproduced below condenses with sharpness (and a relative originality) the dead end of Lefebvre's approach; it was extracted from an article published in 1971:

‘ …  in a plan that could be characterised as a junction between the theoretical and the practical, Marx discovers that the working class needs to take lessons, that knowledge is not immanent to them; for example, the working class, as a class, do not know what is the overall functioning of society. When a political party that wants to “represent” presents a program, that program ignores a very important part of the overall functioning of any society; this is what the critique of the Gotha Programme tells us. The German working class, the most developed one, even being informed and educated by a party that proposes a political agenda, does not capture what is the overall functioning of a society, i.e., not only production and work, but also education, health, school, college, and finally the whole social organisation. The society does not coincide with the class, and the class as a class do not know the overall functioning of society, how to manage the society, which means that it barely knows the management of the social surplus that goes beyond them. We must therefore teach them. This is where the thought of Lenin comes in. The working class, exploited, carries the weight of the simultaneous accumulation of capital from the bourgeoisie, as it exists, and the bourgeois order. It is the basis of revolutionary action; but as a class, it has limitations. It does not handle, as a class, a class project of the social totality. Spontaneity is essential; it undergoes outbursts and relapses; it has limits; the receptivity of the working class exists, but also has its limits.' (Lefebvre 1971, 151)

[French original:

‘ …  sur le plan qui pourrait être celui de la jonction entre le théorique et le pratique, Marx découvre que la classe ouvrière a besoin de recevoir des leçons, que la connaissance ne lui est pas immanente; par exemple: la classe ouvrière, en tant que classe, ignore ce que c'est que le fonctionnement global de la société. Lorsqu'un parti politique qui veut la “représenter” présente un programme, ce programme ignore une partie très importante du fonctionnement global de toute société; c'est ce que dit la critique du programme de Gotha. La classe ouvrière allemande, la plus développée, même informée et instruite par un parti qui lui propose un programme politique, n'a pas bien aperçu ce qu'est le fonctionnement global d'une société, c'est-à-dire non seulement la production et le travail, mais l'enseignement, la médecine, l’école, l'université, enfin toute l'organisation sociale. La société ne coïncide pas avec la classe, et la classe en tant que classe ne connaît pas le fonctionnement global de la société, la manière de gérer uner société, c'est-à-dire qu'elle connaît mal la gestion du surproduit social qui la dépasse. Il faut donc le lui apprendre. C'est là que se greffe la pensée de Lénine. La classe ouvrière, exploitée, porte le poids simultané de l'accumulation du capital de la classe bourgeoise telle qu'elle existe, de l'ordre bourgeois lui-même. Elle est donc la base de l'action révolutionnaire, mais en tant que classe, elle a des limites. Elle ne s’élève pas en tant que classe à la conception de la totalité sociale. La spontanéité est indispensable; elle a des élans et des rechutes; elle a des bornes; la réceptivité de la classe ouvrière existe, mais elle a aussi des bornes.']

In this passage, the author acutely provides us an indication of the following things: (1) that he realises that the class as such refers to a single (albeit essential) aspect of the social totality (the sphere of production), but that this aspect is insufficient when the task is to understand and revolutionise the entire society; (2) that for him the ‘classe ouvrière’ is still seen as a potentially revolutionary subject par excellence (in other parts of the same text Lefebvre tangentially mentions youth and students, but his interest is directed primarily to the ‘classe ouvrière’, which he distinguishes from the proletariat, seen as a broader and more heterogeneous mass); (3) that for him the ‘classe ouvrière’ needs to be ‘educated’ by certain external agents (more or less in the same sense advocated by Lenin and foreshadowed by Marx in his famous critique of the Gotha Programme). It is in this light that one needs to try to assess the degree of (in)coherence of Lefebvre when he calls for ‘generalised self-management’: on the one hand, he realises the strict limits of economism and class-centrism—strongly entrenched in the tradition of thought from which he comes—on the other hand it seems to be extremely difficult for him to extricate himself completely from the avant-gardistic and hierarchical approach that characterises the Marxist–Leninist tradition. Regarding the ‘discovery’ of self-management by Lefebvre, it is also worth consulting The Urban Revolution and L'irruption: de Nanterre au sommet (Lefebvre [1968] 1998 [first edition 1968]) along with his essay ‘Theoretical Problems of Autogestion’ (Lefebvre [1996] 2009 [first French edition of Lefebvre's essay: 1966]).

4 I addressed this problem in the article ‘Which Right to which City? In Defence of Political–Strategic Clarity’ (Souza 2010).

5 This is one of the key terms of the critical–political debate of the last 20 years, around which, however, there remain several misunderstandings and trivialising interpretations (on the latter issue, it is worth noting that the most usual basic version among contemporary movements—‘autonomy in the face of political parties and state institutions'—is, to put it mildly, a very poor meaning). While I briefly turn to this concept later in this paper (Section 3), it is not feasible to try to dispel the thick fog of confusion and polysemy in the space given; so I prefer to direct the reader to the most accurate and deep source I know in this respect, Cornelius Castoriadis. By way of introduction, see Castoriadis ([1979] 1983, [1983] 1986, [1988] 1990a, [1994] 1996). For an even deeper discussion of the philosophical context, see Castoriadis (1975). For a detailed discussion of the spatial dimension of autonomy—a subject unfortunately overlooked by Castoriadis—see Souza (2006a). Finally, it should be noted that these allusions and recommendations relating to an ‘accurate’ conceptual approach does not mean to suggest that praxis should simply let itself be guided by philosophical and scientific reasoning and discussions—let alone the rationalistic and arrogant interpretations that hold they have little or nothing to learn from today's concrete actions and political discourse. It is quite the opposite. Though it may be acceptable and even necessary to draw attention to gaps in shortcomings and even contradictions within the struggles embedded in everyday life, the concrete ways in which the discourses and practices have been built are as such a terrain full of lessons to be reflected upon. This includes reflections on the ‘breaches’ and ‘entrance gates’ through which resistances give life, under varying and often very harsh circumstances, to a category that is essentially political—one that without the sometimes ‘superficial’ attempts to appropriate it would run the risk of being confined to a more or less sterile and self-contained environment of academic debate.

6 As I summarised some time ago (Souza 2012d)

‘[d]irect action is, as (mostly) anarchists have called for generations the activity of armed struggle, but also of propaganda, agitation and organisation, with the purpose of promoting the social revolution and eliminating class exploitation (and the state that gives support to it). There was a time when direct action was considered as “propaganda by the deed” privileging armed confrontation; “direct action” was then synonymous with the use of violence, and it was sometimes even reduced to terrorism. Fortunately, even among those who did not reject or refuse armed resistance as a last resort or as something that is often a matter of strict necessity, direct action began to receive a much broader definition. In this paper, according to this line of interpretation, it designates the practices of struggle that are basically conducted despite the state apparatus or against the state apparatus, i.e. without institutional or economic (immediate) bond with state channels and agencies.'

Direct action contrasts with institutional struggle, which according to the aforementioned article

‘means the use of channels, bodies and state resources, such as management councils, participatory budgeting or public funds. Here, however, a clear distinction between a Marxist–Leninist position and a stance compatible with the libertarian field must be established: the institutional struggle discussed in this text is a non-partisan institutional struggle, i.e. one that does not presuppose the creation of political parties or affiliation to political parties by activists.’

7 ‘War of position’ is an expression inspired by the trench warfare of the First World War, used in the context of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony. In the original Gramscian interpretation, the model of the Russian Revolution (or rather, the model of the capture of the state by the Bolsheviks in October 1917) could not be realistically replicated in the West, with its more complex civil society and state. The theorised process of gradual conquest, ‘trench by trench', later degenerated into ‘entryism', which is the (embryonically present in Gramsci's thought) frankly opportunistic view according to which it is necessary to ‘enter’ the state apparatus, wherever and however possible, in order to try to transform it from within.

8 Eurocommunism was formulated in the 1970s by Italian, Spanish and French political strategists who wanted to break with the increasingly anachronistic Stalinism then prevailing in sclerotic parties such as PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano), PCE (Partido Comunista Español) and PCF (Parti Communiste Français). The attempt to find an alternative route that was neither the communist parties’ (crypto-)Stalinism nor an accommodated reformism in social democratic style had its distinguished defenders (as the bright Greek–French theorist Nicos Poulantzas), but it turned out to be in practice a pretext for ‘entryism’ in its most blatant and opportunistic form.

9 We should not forget that neo-liberalism as a model of economic policy (which presupposes a reinforced belief in the ‘free’ market and in the so-called ‘minimal state', in privatisation, etc.) did not just emerge in the 1970s or 1980s. While Margaret Thatcher's election as British Prime Minister in 1979 and the rise of ‘Reaganomics’ (as the economic policy of the government of Ronald Reagan is known) after Reagan's election to the presidency of the USA the following year were important practical and symbolic landmarks, the implementation of that agenda only became possible in the wake of the capitalist crisis that worsened throughout the 1970s with the two oil shocks. This crisis forced and catalysed both economic–technological transformations (‘Third Industrial Revolution’, increase in productivity, new waves of ‘technological unemployment', increased extraction of relative surplus value, consolidation of economic and financial globalisation) and political and socio-economic changes (weakening of Keynesian economic policies as well as of trade unions, increasingly defensive and even conservative posture of social democratic parties). Developed as an economic policy approach since the 1930s and subsequently identified with (and popularised by) names such as Friedrich Hayek, neo-liberalism experienced a relative decline during the ‘Trente Glorieuses’, a period of history ideologically dominated, as far as the techno-bureaucratic field is concerned, by Keynesianism. But neo-liberalism was (re)summoned as an ideology and as a basic approach to capitalism from the 1980s onwards, while at the same time serving as an expression of the most reactionary proposals, attuned to the interests of a large part of the elite and the middle class (full of resentment towards the state apparatus because of a perception of government failure to be protective enough of their interests).

10 The state-centred matrix was the desarrollista model based on heavy investment and strong state regulation (including massive creation of state enterprises) that stretched between the 1930s and 1970s in Latin America. The term was coined by Marcelo Cavarozzi (1992).

11 I have extensively dealt with this question in Souza (2006a).

12 The concept of ‘urban regime’ was proposed by Clarence Stone in the early 1990s (see Stone 1993) to characterise combinations of institutional forms and economic interests (especially class interests) that express themselves in the form of specific styles of public management: some are more clearly open to pressure from workers and permeable to public participation (with or without quotation marks), while others are repressive and impermeable to any elements of a progressive, redistributive policy agenda. Although the classification proposed by Stone should not be applied unthinkingly to realities that are very different from the US one, like Brazil, the idea of the concept is useful in itself.

13 Also called ‘urban entrepreneurialism’. Several important studies have been published on this. I prefer to call it here simply ‘urban neo-liberalism', to express in a simple and direct way the essence of the phenomenon, which consists in a ‘translation’ of the neo-liberal agenda into the specific ‘language’ of the urban/local arena, and considers the specific interests and agents involved in the accumulation of capital in this context (in which the role of the state, the role of the various fractions of capital, the accumulation strategies, the social conflicts and the modes of resistance have their particularities).

14 The idea of a ‘penal state’ that has largely replaced the ‘welfare state’ is to be mainly credited to Loïc Wacquant, who developed it in a series of books and papers (see, i.e. Wacquant [1999] 2001).

15 I have addressed this characteristic of many contemporary protests and movements in several papers, including Souza (2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2014).

16 In the book The Prison and the Agora (Souza 2006a), I sought to present and scrutinise the background and the circumstances under which the concepts of ‘insurgent spatial practice’ (which corresponds to a recontextualised specification of the more general concept of ‘spatial practice’, sketched by Henri Lefebvre 40 years ago) and ‘dissident territory’ become useful for the analysis of social struggles today. A more direct treatment of those concepts was offered later in other works (such as Souza 2013, Chapters 4 and 10).

17 A discussion of the ideas of ‘reification of the urban’ (Port. reificação do urbano) and ‘fetishisation of urban problems’ (Port. fetichização dos problemas urbanos) can be found in Souza (2006a, Chapter 4.2, Part I). The subject had been briefly addressed in my doctoral dissertation (Souza 1993) as well as in the book The Metropolitan Challenge (Souza 2000, Chapter 3, Part I).

18 Bookchin (1980, unpaginated).

19 An analysis concerning the difference between what I have called ‘luta de bairro’ (literally ‘struggle in the neighbourhood’, but actually meaning parochial neighbourhood activism or neighbourhood activism as a mere ‘politics of turf’) and ‘luta a partir do bairro’ (literally ‘struggle from the neighbourhood', meaning a non-parochial activism that is also concerned with factors, problems and challenges that cannot be understood and much less fought at the micro-local level alone) was developed in a MSc dissertation submitted to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1988, dealing with the potentialities, strengths and limitations of neighbourhood activism (Souza 1988). This analysis was updated and refined later in Souza (2000).

20 I also examined the themes (and problems) of ‘territorial corporatism’ and ‘politophobia’ in Souza (2000) (they had already been examined in my doctoral dissertation).

21 Cortes de ruta and piquetes in urban Argentina, ‘empates’ in the Brazilian Amazon, etc.

22 In that book, Castells (who in the early 1980s had already moved away from the structuralist Marxism of his youth, adopting instead an eclectic position) makes clear, despite meandering language, that ‘urban social movements’ may circumstantially be important, but structurally their importance is secondary, since the ‘urban contradictions’ are ‘structurally secondary’ themselves; the real relevance of these movements will be proportional to the intensity with which they understand that they must perform as good ‘supporting actors’ under the guidance of the workers’ movement (and ultimately under the guidance of the party supposedly representing the interests of the working class). Interestingly, there was no longer a workers’ movement worthy of the name in the early 1970s, what there was was rather the ‘Eurocommunist’ ideology and the political–electoral ambitions of the French Communist Party.

23 Spanish original:

‘En efecto, el “trabajo territorial” contiene en si mismo su propia definición política. Realizar trabajo territorial no sólo significa, en este caso, afianzar el trabajo del colectivo en el espacio local, sino por sobre todo, atribuir a esas actividades comunitarias aptitudes de cambio social. En primer lugar, el trabajo en el territorio se propone como producción de nuevos valores de solidaridad que reconstituyan los lazos interpersonales y las dimensiones existenciales de las personas resquebrajados por el desempleo, la pobreza y las formas de autoritarismo que bajo distintas modalidades calaron en la sociedad. En segundo lugar, esta construcción comunitaria apunta a la producción de una sociedad nueva, que no antagoniza directamente con los lugares del poder instituido para imponerse, sino que se proyecta y autoafirma como “soberanía no estatal”.'

24 Spanish original: ‘toma como principios constitutivos del movimiento la autonomía, la horizontalidad y la democracia directa'.

25 Though often by no means completely, as shown by the interest on the part of almost all piquetero organisations in having access to and managing state subsidies, the Planes.

26 Spanish original: ‘El territorio presenta una doble densidad: es un espacio de confluencia entre las prácticas comunitarias instaladas, las nuevas problemáticas y las referidas al desempleo, pero también indica un espacio de organización y unidad política.’

27 Spanish original:

‘ …  la definición de la CTA supone por un lado la “vuelta” a un Estado de derechos que garantice su acceso a los ciudadanos, y por otro, la transformación de los “territorios políticos” como (meros) espacios barriales disputados por estructuras partidarias, a la idea de territorio como perspectiva de construcción de un proyecto colectivo con las bases, consensuado en las instancias intermedias y unificado en las instancias superiores o nacionales, a través de los congresos y las elecciones'.

28 Spanish original:

‘En realidad, el barrio siempre fue un espacio de las organizaciones de los partidos y no de las organizaciones de los trabajadores. Y, digamos, esto ha abierto una discusión importante, y en segundo lugar, el territorio fue lo que permitió que la Central tuviera y mantuviera un nivel de presencia en el conflicto social que de otra manera no hubiera podido tener, si se hubiera quedado restringida al ámbito estrictamente laboral.'

29 Spanish original: ‘Somos el rostro de quienes pueblan el territorio, las manos de quienes día a día producen socialmente el hábitat. Somos las esperanzas de quienes decidieron mostrar y mostrarse, que sí se puede, que es posible una ciudad distinta.’

30 Spanish original:

‘Somos quienes lo hacemos desde la Lucha, la Autogestión y la Educación Popular; lo primero para botar las barreras que levantan los ricos y poderosos frente al avance de los pobres, lo segundo para recuperar y administrar las riquezas producidas por nuestra clase, y lo tercero para contribuir a la liberación cultural de nuestros pueblos.'

31 Spanish original:

‘La Vida Digna si bien es un horizonte, no corresponde a un estadio lejano que se conquistará tras la superación de etapas. Ésta, lejos de ser una vida que se propone alcanzar hacia delante, a futuro, el nuevo poblador y la nueva pobladora busca sus respuestas mirando hacia atrás, al pasado, reencontrándose en el presente con su historia. No hay futuro al cual llegar, sino sólo un presente que construir con el poblamiento del territorio. Estamos hablando de un poder popular que se gesta mediante la producción social del hábitat, en entregar opciones para ir haciendo desde abajo un proyecto de vida distinto. Es un modelo organizativo que se encauza a regalar una nueva ética a los territorios y formas de relacionarnos en comunidad.'

32 Spanish original: ‘Somos quienes tienen un sueño más grande que la casa propia. Somos quienes conquistaremos la Vida Digna.’

33 Spanish original:

‘Sin embargo frente al avance hegemonizante de este modelo de producción de hábitat y de ciudad, se han levantado procesos emancipatórios desde donde se ha ido forjando una política distinta. Ha sido ahí, abajo, donde la organización popular ha sido capaz de emplazar nuevas relaciones sociales y forjar institucionalidades alternativas que van modelando una nueva realidad territorial. Este es el camino de las prácticas autogestionarias de hábitat popular.'

34 See Zibechi (2007, 26).

35 Politics of scale is the expression through which Anglo-Saxon geographers have called

‘the articulation of actions and actors operating at different scalar levels (i.e. having different magnitudes and presenting different ranges) for the purpose of enhancing positive effects, neutralising or mitigating the impact of adverse actions or taking greater advantage of favourable situations; for example, expanding spheres of influence (in order to expand audiences, sensitise actors who are potential allies, etc.) and providing policy synergies (by means of recruiting new supporters, overcoming corporatism, etc.)'.

This is the concise version of how I portrayed a first approximation of the concept's essence a few years ago for a Brazilian audience (Souza 2013; this description had already been used in a paper published in 2010).

36 In parallel, in fact, there has also been a kind of ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences and humanities; researchers have been talking about it (sometimes with some exaggeration) since the 1990s. Thinkers such as Foucault and Lefebvre, let it be said in passing, had already anticipated and prepared this ‘turn’ (each of them in his own way and with different emphases and interests) in several of their works of the 1960s and 1970s.

37 See Biehl and Staudenmaier (1995); Bernardo (2003, Part 7, Chapter 3).

38 See, for instance, the edited books Post-scarcity Anarchism (Bookchin 2004: see especially the essays ‘Ecology and Revolutionary Thought’, originally published in 1965, ‘Towards a Liberatory Technology', also from 1965, and ‘Post-scarcity Anarchism', published 1968) and Social Ecology and Communalism (Bookchin 2007: see especially the essay ‘What is Social Ecology?’, published in 1993 and revised in 1996 and 2001). See also the book The Ecology of Freedom (Bookchin [1982] 2005 [first edition in 1982]).

39 See, for instance, the essay ‘Technique', included in Castoriadis ([1973] 1978a);<<t/s: link in-text citation>> see also the book From Ecology to Autonomy, consisting in the transcript of a debate among Castoriadis and Daniel Cohn-Bendit that took place in Belgium in 1980 (Castoriadis and Cohn-Bendit 2014).

40 See also his magnum opus, the book The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Georgescu-Roegen 1971).

41 Very often experts differentiate between a ‘closed’ and an ‘isolated’ thermodynamic system, the latter referring to a system through which neither energy nor matter can pass, while a ‘closed’ system is one that can exchange energy with its environment (an ‘open’ system being one which both energy and matter can enter and exit). However, this terminology seems unsatisfactory, as the word ‘closed’ already suggests isolation. Therefore, instead of ‘isolated’ I have used the term ‘closed', and instead of ‘closed’ I have proposed the term ‘semi-closed’.

42 The ‘minimal bioeconomic program’ he presented at the end of his seminal paper on energy and economic myths can be summarised by the following list of demands: ‘the production of all instruments of war, not only of war itself, should be prohibited completely'; ‘through the use of these productive forces as well as by additional well-planned and sincerely intended measures, the underdeveloped nations must be aided to arrive as quickly as possible at a good (not luxurious) life'; ‘mankind should gradually lower its population to a level that could be adequately fed only by organic agriculture'; ‘until either the direct use of solar energy becomes a general convenience or controlled fusion is achieved, all waste of energy—by overheating, overcooling, overspeeding, overlighting, etc.—should be carefully avoided, and if necessary, strictly regulated'; ‘we must cure ourselves of the morbid craving for extravagant gadgetry, splendidly illustrated by such a contradictory item as the golf cart, and for such mammoth splendors as two-garage cars'; ‘we must also get rid of fashion, of “that disease of the human mind”, as Abbot Fernando Galliani characterized it in his celebrated Della monetta (1750)'; ‘the necessity that durable goods be made still more durable by being designed so as to be repairable'; ‘we should cure ourselves of what I have been calling “the circumdrome of the shaving machine”, which is to shave oneself faster so as to have more time to work on a machine that shaves faster so as to have more time to work on a machine that shaves still faster, and so on ad infinitum [ … ] [w]e must come to realize that an important prerequisite for a good life is a substantial amount of leisure spent in an intelligent manner’ (Georgescu-Roegen 1975, 377–378). In light of this, it is possible to accuse the author of a certain lack of realism (something always vulnerable to moralism) rather than of defending a clear ‘right-wing’ position, in spite of some possible authoritarian implications of demands such as birth control.

43 He said precisely that in a letter to me in the mid-1980s.

44 ‘Primitivism’ (or ‘back to nature’) was something by no means shared by Georgescu-Roegen, who was intelligent enough to avoid this kind of fragile and potentially contradictory position: ‘It would be foolish to propose a complete renunciation of the industrial comfort of the exosomatic evolution. Mankind will not return to the cave or, rather, to the tree’ (Georgescu-Roegen 1975, 377). In relation to this point, we should further bear in mind that pre-capitalist/pre-‘modern’ societies also experienced many situations of severe environmental degradation and even environmental collapse, as historians have shown (see e.g. Ponting [1991] 2007).

45 Also used by ‘political ecologists’ based in France in the 1970s (such as Bosquet 1978) and later used by Biehl and Staudenmaier (1995).

46 There are plenty of similar arguments in Altvater's works, also in the mentioned paper: (1) ‘The capitalist production and reproduction process is a spiral (interrupted by periodical crises) of growth and the “ladder on nature”—as Marx calls it—always becomes longer and longer [ … ]’ (Altvater 2011, unpaginated); (2) ‘The second caveat has to do with a certain labour-centrism in the concept and a systematic neglect of nature. Some ecologists therefore reproach Marx with a certain negligence of the “value of nature” in the process of value-production (e.g. Immler 1984; Bunker 1985, Deléage 1989). But this rebuke only is relevant in so far as the labour process is concerned. Of course, nature is as important as labour in processing matter and energy into needed use values. Here, the laws of thermodynamics are valid, and the inputs and outputs are in energy and matter units quantitatively not different, but qualitatively changed into use values on the one hand and into waste on the other. In the course of the process from input to output man and nature work together; they are both equally important. But as a process of exchange value production it is only labour which creates value and surplus value. The reason which mostly is misunderstood by the critics of the Marxian concept of nature, is as follows: nature is wonderfully productive—the evolution of species in the history of the planet and their tremendous diversity and variety show it. But nature is not value-productive because it produces no commodities to be sold on the market. There is no market in nature. The market is a social and economic construct. … ’ (Altvater 2011, unpaginated); (3) ‘Thus, the capitalist dynamic can be characterised as bound to the laws of nature and to the limits which nature always sets vis-à-vis any human activity. This is the reason why Marx concludes, “that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour”. As William Petty puts it, “labour is the father and the earth its mother” (MEW 23, 58). But by applying the laws of nature in the labour process man transforms nature into a man-made nature, a “humanized” nature which at the beginning of each production process is tapped and at the end of consumption is used as a sink for the waste produced’ (Altvater 2011, unpaginated); (4) ‘The other side of the production process however is creation of value and surplus value, i.e. capitalist accumulation and economic growth. Because of the self-referential character of capital this side of the production process does not know or accept external, i.e. natural limits to its dynamics. The idea of growth without limits is a direct consequence of the immanence of fetishism in the social forms which rule the societal relations of men. [ … ]’ (Altvater 2011, unpaginated); (5) ‘The substitution of natural cycles and time-space regimes by industrial cycles and time-space regimes in agriculture has a detrimental impact on the environment, the natural as well as the built one and on the social system. This is a key factor for the aggravation of the ecological crisis of capitalism and for the counter-movements against it’ (Altvater 2011, unpaginated).

47 French original:

‘A mesure que les peuples en sont développés en intelligence et liberté, ils on appris à reagir sur cette nature extérieure dont ils subissaient passivement l'influence; devenus, par la force de l'association, de véritables agens géologiques, ils ont transformé de diverses manières la surface des continents, changé l'ensemble des eaux courantes, modifié les climats eux-mêmes. Parmi les œuvres que des animaux d'un ordre inférieur out accomplies sur la terre, les ilots de madrépores et des coraux peuvent, il est vrai, se comparer aux travaux de l'homme par leur étendue; mais ces constructions gigantesques n'ajoutant pas un trait nouveau à la physionomie générale du globe et se poursuivent d'une manière uniforme, fatale pour ainsi dire, comme si elles étaient produits par les forces inconscientes de la nature. L'action de l'homme donne au contraire la plus grande diversité d'aspect à la surface terrestre. D'un coté elle détruit, de l'autre elle améliore; suivant l’état social et les progrès de chaque peuple, elle contribue tantôt à dégrader la nature, tantôt à l'embellir.'

The very same spirit is found, a few years later, in the second volume of La Terre, in a passage very similar to the previously quoted:

‘Human action, so powerful to dry swamps and lakes, to remove the barriers between different countries, to modify the original distribution of plant and animal species, is therefore of decisive importance regarding the transformations suffered by the appearance of the planet. It can beautify the Earth, but it can also make it ugly; depending on the state and social customs of each people, sometimes it helps to degrade nature, sometimes to transform it.' (Reclus 1868–69, 745–746)

[French original:

‘L'action de l'homme, si puissante pour déssecher les marécages et les lacs, pour niveler les obstacles entre les différents pays, pour modifier la répartition première des espèces végétales et animales, est par cela même d'une importance décisive dans les transformations que subit l'aspect extérieur de la planète. Elle peut embellir la terre, mais elle peut aussi l'enlaidir; suivant l’état social et les mœurs de chaque peuple, elle contribue tantôt à dégrader la nature, tantôt à la transfigurer.’]

48 Explicit power (pouvoir explicite), along with ‘implicit infra-power’ (infra-pouvoir implicite), builds a couple of key concepts, both borrowed from Cornelius Castoriadis ([1994] 1996). Explicit power refers to the decision-making institutions (government, in its broadest sense—including radically democratic self-government), while ‘implicit infra-power’ has to do with the ‘inertia’ and influence of ‘social imaginary significations’ (ethical values, religious beliefs, myths, Weltanschauungen, taboos, etc.) that sustain instituted society. In the case of heteronomous ‘social imaginary significations', it is about values, norms and conventions that regardless of (but complementary to) state institutions affect social life in accordance with the imperatives of exploitation, alienation and social control.

49 French original: ‘[ … ] la capacité, pour une instance quelconque (personelle ou impersonelle), d'amener quelqu'un (quelques'uns) à faire (ou à ne pas faire) ce que, laissé à lui-même, il n'aurait pas nécessairement fait (ou aurait peut-être fait) [ … ]’.

50 French original:

‘Autonomie: autos-nomos, (se donner) soi-même ses lois. [ … ] En quel sens un individu peut-il être autonome? [ … ] L'autonomie de l'individu consiste en ceci qu'un autre rapport est établi entre l'instance réflexive et les autres instances psychiques, comme aussi entre son présent et l'histoire moyennant laquelle il s'est fait tel qu'il est, lui permettant d’échappers à l'asservissement de la répétition, de se retourner sur lui-même, les raisons de ses pensées et les motifs de ses actes, guidé par la visée du vrai et l’élucidation de son désir. [ … ] Pui-je dire que je pose ma loi—lorsque je vis nécessairement sou la loi de la société? Oui, dans un cas: si je peux dire, réfleximement et lucidement, que cette loi est aussi la mienne. Pour que je puisse dire cela, il n'est pas nécessaire que je l'approuve: il suffit que j'aie eu la possibilité effective de participer activemment à la formation et au fonctionement de la loi. La possibilité de participer: se j'accepte l'idée d'autonomie comme telle (non pas soulement parce qu'elle est “bonne pour moi”), ce qu’évidemment aucune “demonstration” ne peut m'obliger a faire pas plus qu'elle ne peut m'obliger à mettre en accord mes paroles et mes actes, la pluralité indéfinie d'individus appartenant à la société entraine aussitôt la démocratie, comme possibilité effective d’égale participation de tous aussi bien aux activités instituantes qu'au pouvoir explicite [ … ].'

51 Catterall (2013a, 2013b, 2013c) devoted a series of editorials to this issue, asking in one of them whether environmental destruction is the ‘inevitable price of modern progress'.

‘Or would a multidimensional approach as indicated here suggest that it would be closer to the realities and implications of the case to describe it as the destruction of a cherished, life-affirming place and experience by modern capitalist (including statist) forces for which urbanisation provides a face or a front? We need a reconceptualisation—though the notion of reconceptualisation is not quite adequate, it is the taken-for-granted truth potential of concepts as opposed to images that is in question, not so much a reconceptualisation as a reimaging and re-imagining—of planetary urbanisation in order to answer these questions.’ (Catterall 2013a, 705)

In another text he stresses that ‘[a]n alternative paradigm, outlined here, is one in which the biosocial and gendered nature of culture, including its relationship to agriculture and “the rural”, is central to its explorations of the full geo-spatial field and their implications for action' (Catterall 2013c, 369).A series of relevant papers by Adrian Atkinson (2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2009) on ‘cities after oil’ had also been published in City, contributing to show the journal's commitment to a search for non-simplistic, uncritically ‘urbanophilic’ solutions.

52 ‘New intransparency’ is actually the free and approximate translation of Habermas's expression ‘neue Unübersichtlichkeit’ that has spread in anglophone countries. The German expression basically means ‘new inability to obtain overviews', and despite the reasonable approximation of meaning that the translation into English provides, something of the German term is lost with it, because it is not exactly ‘intransparency’ what it is, but the difficulty to achieve lucid form judgments amidst a bewildering complexity of factors and elements, with so many illusions or even delusions, contradictions, distortions, confusions and false appearances. No wonder that the category of ‘totality’ used, overused and sometimes misused by Marxists is one of the intellectual casualties in a period of history in which theoretical minimalism is shamelessly celebrated, certainly as an exaggerated reaction to excessive generalisations self-confidently perpetrated by past generations of radical scholars and thinkers.

53 See ‘L’époque du conformisme généralisé’ (Castoriadis [1989] 1990b).

54 ‘Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt drauf an, sie zu verändern.’

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Notes on contributors

Marcelo Lopes de Souza

Marcelo Lopes de Souza is a professor at the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.