By Frei Beto on February 2, 2025
Capitalism destroys nature. Image generated with AI
In 1974, Hans Magnus Enzensberger published an article entitled “Towards a critique of political ecology” in which he questioned the Marxist paradigm that the development of the productive forces would eradicate misery. Allied with Marcuse, the German intellectual emphasized that “the productive forces reveal themselves as destructive forces and threaten the entire natural basis of human life.”
Increasing industrialization, the expansion of consumerism, the “society of superabundance” destroy the environmental balance, sacrifice the poorest and compromise the future of coming generations. It is a paradox: wealth generates poverty, as Pope Francis warns in the encyclical Laudato si (Praise be to you: on the care of the common home).
In Ecology, a liberation ethic, the philosopher André Gorz points out that ecology only achieves its political and ethical character when it is understood that the devastation of the Earth is the result of a mode of production centered on the maximization of profits and the use of technologies and resources that violate the biological balance, such as fossil fuels.
In “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Walter Benjamin questioned the technocratic and positivist concept of history derived from the development of the productive forces. He dreamed of a type of work that “far from exploiting nature, is capable of bringing to light its creatures dormant in its womb as promises”.
In 1964, sixty years ago, Murray Bookchin wrote: “Since the industrial revolution, the total atmospheric mass of carbon dioxide has increased by 13% with respect to previous, more stable levels. Based on solid theoretical foundations, it can be affirmed that this growing blanket of carbon dioxide, by intercepting the heat radiated by the Earth into outer space, will lead to an increase in atmospheric temperatures, more violent air circulation, more destructive storm patterns and, finally, the melting of the polar ice caps (…), rising sea levels and the flooding of vast territories”. Clearer, water.
In 1972 Marcuse discovered nature as an ally of those who fight against predatory societies, such as capitalism. In Counter-Revolution and Revolt, he stated: ‘The discovery of nature’s liberating forces and its vital role in the construction of a free society becomes a new force for social change’.
This debate on political ecology gave rise to ecosocialism, in which the work of Michael Löwy stands out. The more the productive forces advance without ecological parameters, the more nature, its only source of resources, is degraded. The foundations of the sustainability of the human species are destroyed. Techno-economic ambition takes precedence over the conditions of life on Earth.
Modern rationality commits another serious error by excluding traditional indigenous and peasant practices from ecological thinking. In order to dominate territories in emerging and underdeveloped countries, it imposes technocratic thinking and promotes the colonization of knowledge. That is why the struggles of native peoples are political and epistemological, since they aim at the decolonization of knowledge to achieve cultural and political emancipation and the emergence of sustainable territories of life. It is necessary to decolonize knowledge, which means promoting the recognition and revaluation of traditional knowledge and other forms of knowledge, such as “popular wisdom” or “local knowledge”.
As Milton Santos pointed out, the Eurocentric vision of culture, imposed as a universal value, branded the culture of native peoples as retrograde, silencing cultures or knowledge with its instrumental reason.
In the encyclical Laudato si, Pope Francis emphasizes that “the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest. Today we have to recognize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.
“The entire material universe is a language of God’s love, of his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is God’s caress.”
“It is clearly inconsistent to fight against the trafficking of endangered animals, but remain completely indifferent to human trafficking, not to take an interest in the poor or seek to destroy another human being we do not like.
“Any ecological approach must integrate a social perspective that takes into account the fundamental rights of the most disadvantaged”.
As Chico Mendes said, separating the environmental issue from politics is not ecology, it is gardening.
Source: Cubadebate translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English