On Reactionary Environmentalism
One of the most pressing issues we in the revolutionary movement struggle with today is climate change and the rapid destabilization of our environment. In recent years, even bourgeois institutions such as the IPCC have sounded alarm bells regarding environmental collapse. In 2021, UN Chief Antonio Guterres cited the most recent IPCC report at the time, declaring the climate crisis as “code red for humanity”.
We as Marxists understand that climate catastrophe is the result of contradictions between capitalist production and nature (the capitalist requirement of infinite growth on a finite planet) and therefore cannot be solved under the current dictatorship of capital. These contradictions within the economic base of capitalist society, are manifested in the culture and ideology of our society. This manifestation has historically emerged as a dichotomy between human civilization and nature. We see this dichotomy ideologically reflect the historical processes of colonialism and capitalism that seek endless resource extraction, endless growth and endless profit accumulation. These ideological reflections see nature then as something to conquer, as something for humans to chauvinistically exploit in any way we choose. We in the exploited economic classes must understand that this mentality and false dichotomy does not benefit us in any way and only further alienates us. Marxism teaches us to overcome false dichotomies that mystify reality and only serve the interests of the ruling capitalist class, which at best can only try and fail at reconciling endless economic growth with environmental sustainability, or more violently prioritize economic interests over the environment entirely.
However, the false dichotomy between human civilization and nature does not only manifest by placing humans above nature, but in recent decades has manifested as the inverse: placing nature above humans. This mentality is seen across left and right political ideologies ranging from fascist movements in Europe, to “post-civilization” and nihilist strains of anarchism. Ultimately, the false dichotomy between civilization and nature in the direction of nature, wrongly shifts blame from the systemic societal issues and the flaws of capitalism, to humanity itself, framing humans as detrimental to the natural world. This mentality is more attractive to the working class who now largely realizes the cataclysmic environmental effects of capitalism-fueled climate change, but ultimately still supports capitalist interests and only targets the most vulnerable people in society, which is why it must be combatted.
Post-civilization, anti-civilization and nihilist strains of anarchism for instance, tend to view organized society and technological advancements as inherently harmful, idealizing a return to decentralized, agrarian society. However, society, being a form of collective production, is a natural human activity. Humans need to produce the necessities of life in order to survive, and have organically built societies for thousands of years because of this, advancing production techniques in the form of technology. Problems within societies stem from systemic inequalities and exploitation due to contradictions between social classes, not from the formation of society or technology itself. Advocating for a backwards return to pre-agrarian social formations implies catastrophic consequences for billions of people including the most vulnerable (disabled people, pregnant people, the elderly, etc.) aligning with a eugenicist, survival-of-the-fittest mentality which has been central to fascist movements for decades.
Overpopulation is another concept aligning with an anti-human but pro-nature mentality. This concept wrongly asserts that Earth has too many people. Like post/anti-civilization, it implies the validity of extreme measures like eugenics or genocide as solutions. In a world dominated by capital which requires the exploitation of billions of people, especially in the global south, who will be the first targeted by population quelling measures? The issue is not the number of people on Earth, but rather Capitalism’s inability to distribute resources, due to production under it revolving around profit accumulation rather than human need.
We even see these mentalities take shape in subtle ways such as the common belief that anything natural or organic is inherently superior to anything synthetically produced by humans. Besides the vagueness of this belief (we must ask ourselves when we hear this: superior at what?)This appeal to nature fallacy is flawed because it disregards that all matter; including ‘synthetic’ compounds, are composed of the same natural periodic elements. A perceived preference of organic over ‘synthetic’ implies that an object is corrupted by the application of human nature — that when humans change a thing, they degrade it in some way. . It is understandable to think this due to harmful manufactured products like microplastics that hurt the environment and human health, but it is the responsibility of politically educated members of the working class to emphasize that the careless production of harmful products is not due to these products being manufactured, but is due to the fact that production is currently operated for profit accumulation even if it actively harms the environment and human health. Production happening under the democratic control of the working class is the solution to this problem. Many beneficial manufactured products such as vaccines, insulin, solar panels, etc. could also be more accessible, considering their necessity.
Us revolutionaries, us Marxists must combat the ways in which capitalism mystifies the natural world and our relation to it. With dialectical materialism we see that there is no dichotomy between civilization and nature. Nature is not something to be conquered, nor is it something humans must “return to”, or that should reclaim us at the cost of basic security and livelihood for millions or billions of the most vulnerable people. There is no human production without the natural land it must occur on, and we are at a point where the way we produce things directly affects the environmental trajectory of the entire planet. We must understand the relationship between civilization and nature as a dialectical one, and dismantle the structures of capitalist imperialism so that we can overcome our alienation as workers, with the planet we all live on, produce on, and need to survive.