The Search for a Mass Ecological Constituency

Abstract

A core requirement for addressing the ecological crisis will be to reverse the expansionist thrust, which is inherent in capitalism. I explore the political conditions for achieving such a reversal, asking specifically on what basis a vast popular movement inspired by this goal may emerge. Because the drive to economic accumulation arises from the class interest of capital, a coherent and effective opposition to it must reflect a class position opposed to capital. In this sense, environmentalism is a class issue. After noting earlier theoretical expressions of this insight, I review (focusing on the US case) key expressions of explicit working-class environmentalism. How can such awareness be extended and amplified? Recognizing the diversity of constituencies that a working-class perspective must embody, I examine environmentalist dimensions of the demands associated with particular sectors (notably, the anti-racist and the feminist movements). It becomes apparent that whereas the legitimacy of such demands has attained wide formal acceptance, the related challenge to concentrated economic power continues to be marginalized and even stigmatized. An important prop to such stigmatization in the United States is the persistent credence accorded, in public discourse, to pseudo-scientific denials of the environmental crisis. But a more insidious obstacle to anti-capitalist mobilization is the contention, on the part of self-proclaimed anti-“catastrophists,” that although radical social change is desirable, advocating it as part of an ecological agenda is counterproductive to the near-term task of promoting environmental reforms within the capitalist setting. I argue, on the contrary, that theorizing and organizing for a socialist alternative is necessary not only for long-term purposes, but also as a basis for identifying immediate steps to be taken. I suggest that a basis for reconciling urgent practical measures with society-wide transformation may be found in the tradition of struggles for worker control.

Keywords:

• environmental justice
• class
• labor
• racism
• feminism

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Frank Ackerman, David Gilbert, Ben Manski, Richard Rosen, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.

Notes on Contributor

Victor Wallis teaches in the Liberal Arts Department at the Berklee College of Music (in Boston) and is the managing editor of the journal Socialism and Democracy. He previously taught political science for many years at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. His articles—encompassing an array of subjects including ecology, political strategies, the US Left, and Latin American revolutionary film—have appeared in Monthly Review, Capitalism Nature Socialism, New Political Science, Socialism and Democracy, Jump Cut, Organization & Environment, and the Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, and have been translated into 12 languages.

Notes

¹ The gravity of the threat is a scientific assessment (see, e.g., Hansen 2009). Some (e.g., Lilley et al. 2012) have denounced such notions of extreme danger as “catastrophist” and counterproductive. The latter charge is linked to the unfounded assumption that advocacy of drastic or systemic change precludes support for less sweeping near-term demands. We return to this issue in the final section of the present article.

² For a useful synthesis, see Magdoff and Foster (2011).

³ Perhaps the most egregious instance of such assault was the 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, where the release of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals resulted in thousands of deaths and many more injuries.

⁴ See the New Economics Institute's graphic report (2013) on a Harvard Business School survey of over 5000 Americans, showing the contrast between supposed and actual levels of wealth-inequality in the United States.

⁵ This point is made directly by Doug Henwood in his Foreword to Catastrophism (Lilley et al. 2012, xv). For a critique of earlier expressions of this position, see Wallis (2008).

⁶ Not all purportedly pro-environmental short-term measures are compatible with long-term transformation. Such measures often involve, on the contrary, extremely dangerous technologies—e.g., emulating volcanic eruptions—designed precisely to permit the continuation of business as usual (see Hamilton 2013). Among the many positive measures, by contrast, has been the outright banning of toxic substances such as the pesticide DDT (see Commoner 1990, 41–44) and, more generally, implementation of the 1970s regulatory acts, as well as steps of all kinds to restore natural habitats and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

⁷ See the documentary films on workers' initiatives during revolutionary moments in Chile (1972–73) and Venezuela (2002), cited in Wallis (2011). For a general analysis, see Wolff (2012).