A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #362 - Review - Capitalist Ecocide, Volume 2: Nature in the Grip of Capital - Alain Bihr (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In the first volume of this comprehensive work, we explored, with Alain 
Bihr, the various theaters of the ongoing climate catastrophe. With 
extensive scientific explanations of the degradation of the natural 
environment, Bihr's main objective was to demonstrate the systemic 
nature of the Holocene upheaval, effectively marking our entry into an 
unknown geological era. He was careful to remind us that no alternative 
could emerge from capital, presenting how attempts at ecological 
intervention by public and private powers in this area were nothing more 
than a vast deception. In this second volume, Alain Bihr explains why it 
cannot be otherwise.

Bihr had already pointed out that Marx's work lacked a systematic 
analysis of the role of the natural environment in the dual relationship 
of exploitation that unites capital and living labor in the daily course 
of the expanded reproduction of this mode of production. He therefore 
proposes that we return to this three-way interplay between capital, 
human labor power, and natural matter, in order to enrich Marxist 
materialist thought and demonstrate that no struggle with ecological 
aims can disregard the social relation of capitalist exploitation, and 
vice versa.

The expropriation of producers or the great separation
It is by examining the modes of production preceding the advent of 
capitalism that we can understand its historical singularity. In a brief 
diachronic allusion to capitalist development, which he has already 
extensively discussed in his remarkable description of The First Age of 
Capitalism (Syllepse, 2018), Bihr recalls the conditions that made this 
mode of production possible. The first of these conditions was, of 
course, the separation between the means of production and the producers 
through private property. The enclosure movement in England during the 
16th and 17th centuries is the best-known example.

Whereas previous modes of production systematically associated producers 
with the means of production, sometimes even transforming producers into 
means of production within the framework of slavery, the Great 
Transformation identified by Karl Polanyi corresponds to the 
commodification of land and labor power, a single operation which will 
have the effect of creating what Marx ironically called "the free worker".

At this point, the working class, whose labor power is initially the 
property of the entire capitalist class before being the property of any 
particular employer, is condemned to meet the demands of capital in 
order to reproduce itself and thus reproduce the conditions for the 
expanded reproduction of the entire system, which cannot survive without 
living labor. Indeed, only the difference between necessary labor 
(equivalent to wages) and surplus labor (equivalent to surplus value) 
constitutes the increment of value added to the initially invested 
capital. This is the foundation of capitalist accumulation. If 
accumulation ceases, crisis ensues.

While Karl Marx's focus was rightly primarily on the relationship 
between the capitalist class and the proletariat, this great separation 
undoubtedly had a major anthropological impact on the symbiotic unity of 
the time between man and nature.

To study this rupture in the original symbiotic unity, Bihr first 
revisits the foundation of the transformation of matter in the human 
species. He reminds us that this involves identifying the ways in which 
human beings interact with one another in their relationship to nature, 
which they use to reproduce a given society. It is from this definition 
that we can systematically integrate the concept of nature into the 
dialectic of capitalist relations of production. By separating producers 
from their means of production, capitalism has brought about a 
transformation of associated worldviews, notably the advent of 
scientific thought, which, as we shall see, has paved the way in many 
respects for the intentions of the capitalist mode of production. It 
took time and strong social pressures to arrive at this idea that nature 
confronts us.

To define this rupture of symbiotic unity, Foster, an author who has 
greatly contributed to highlighting the ecological contributions of 
Marx's work, put forward the concept of "metabolic rift," an expression 
used only once by Marx, to describe the decoupling of the relationship 
between man and nature within the framework of capitalism.

For Bihr, the exaggerated nature of the fault line, sometimes presented 
as a complete rupture, prevents us from understanding the relationship 
that capital establishes with nature. He artificially describes an 
absolute separation, whereas from a materialist perspective, considering 
the natural elements of the human species and the various necessary 
exchanges involved in the metabolic reproduction of the natural and 
human social substrates, introducing a total estrangement between the 
two, through a rupture-based conception of the relationship, is first 
and foremost false and secondly politically sterile.

Bihr explains Foster's error as stemming from the latter's analytical 
focus on the single moment of expropriation, on this separation between 
producers and means of production. We find the same analytical errors in 
the use of the concept of a reserve army, recently enshrined in the 
concept of "overpopulation" viewed as absolute, which, in certain 
radical interpretations, tends to equate a mechanism of capitalist 
reproduction with a definitive breakdown. Just as the reserve army is 
merely a proletarian variable destined to be exploited sooner or later 
under degraded conditions, nature, despite the symbiotic rupture 
represented by capitalism, is not a mere bystander ready to defend 
itself. The concept of "abstract nature," which Bihr will return to at 
the end of this volume, should instead illustrate how non-human material 
forces are assimilated by capital within the framework of its 
reproduction. Therefore, there is no fault or break between man and 
nature, but a radical transformation of both human beings and nature by 
capital.

At the heart of the machine
Marxist contributions to the analysis of the ecological catastrophe have 
never sufficiently integrated the problematic relationship between 
nature and capital as value in process, that is, from the perspective of 
its valorization process. Yet, this process presupposes the 
commodification of the constituent elements of the production 
process-labor power, certainly, but also all the elements that 
contribute to the production of value. The metamorphosis of the status 
of natural elements is therefore just as crucial. Here, we are not 
talking about the use-value of the natural substrate (drinking water to 
quench one's thirst) but rather about value in the capitalist sense of 
the term (selling water to make money), a value that is autonomous and 
embodied in daily life by monetary symbols and materials.

To correct this misconception, Bihr proposes examining the driving force 
of the MPC (Model of Production and Compensation), namely the 
subordination of the labor process to the valorization process, within 
which nature, defined as an active agent, is also subordinated, and 
therefore transformed. Bihr's contribution is refreshing because it 
applies the concept of subsumption, as a proven logic of classification 
(Marx's most effective in my view), to the phenomena of nature's 
appropriation.

In Chapter VI, or the unpublished chapter, Marx offers a diachronic and 
synchronic view of the appropriation of labor by capital. The 
subsumption of labor under capital is the way in which capital, in its 
valorization process, uses labor power to produce additional capital. 
This is, strictly speaking, the heart of capitalism. Without additional 
capital, capitalism is meaningless. The sole objective of this mode of 
production, for the capitalist class, is to make money, with money, in 
order to enrich themselves and dominate.

Marx identifies three phases (diachrony) or three modes (synchrony) of 
the appropriation of labor by capital:
* First, there is subordination, characteristic of mercantilism, in 
which emerging capital simply appropriates the products of labor, 
arranging the terms of exchange to be favorable to it in order to profit 
from them. The most developed elements of this process exist in what has 
been called the putting-out system, where workers labored from their 
homes for an employer who provided the means of production and the raw 
materials necessary for the labor process. As the only outlet, the 
employer could easily exert pressure on piece-rate wages and profitably 
resell their merchandise on the market. In another, more peasant-based 
configuration, a large part of the colonial economy also relied on this 
principle, centered around raw agricultural products.
* To define the "generally" capitalist mode of production, Marx uses the 
concept of the formal subsumption of labor under capital. This time, the 
labor process is formally subsumed, brought together in one place, with 
a wage-earning workforce (paid by the hour, no longer by the piece) and 
private ownership of the means of production by the capitalist engaged 
in the valorization process. Marx describes it as formal because 
capital, since its rationality of economic optimization, has not yet 
been able to reorganize the labor process. Consequently, the same 
manufacturing methods are retained, the division of labor is limited, 
and so is labor productivity. We are operating on a principle of 
absolute surplus value. This system quickly loses its effectiveness 
since working days are inherently limited.
Through competition, workers' struggles, and scientific discoveries 
heavily influenced by capitalist logic, capital manages to break down 
labor into tasks and increase the productivity of those tasks with the 
help of machinery. This has the effect of increasing the rate of surplus 
value, and therefore the exploitation of labor power. By ensuring 
greater productivity, capitalists bring cheaper and more numerous 
products to market. This is not done out of the goodness of their 
hearts. It is what Marx called the real subsumption of labor under 
capital. This process allows for the reduction of the value of labor 
power, which corresponds to the proletarians' subsistence basket, 
through relative surplus value. This corresponds in particular to the 
famous Fordist period, which is presented to us, in the countries of the 
historical core of capitalism, as the advance hand in hand of capital 
and the working class. This has in reality resulted in the fierce 
repression of revolutionary movements in all corners of the world, under 
the bullets of both domestic and foreign armies, and in the 
globalization of capitalist relations of production under degraded 
conditions. We are still in this situation today.

It is this framework that Bihr will attempt to apply to the 
appropriation of nature in order to understand how capital has also 
modified this active agent in the production process. The objective is 
to understand how capital conforms nature to its concrete abstraction, 
which is value, in the same way that it conforms the workers' actions in 
the labor process. It is capital's indifferent stance, as value in 
process, toward these sources of energy and embodiment of the commodity, 
that formulates its fundamentally contradictory relationship with nature.

Here, Bihr, while presenting the moments of appropriation 
diachronically, reminds us, like Marx, that the modes described, taken 
in isolation, can very well exist simultaneously, depending on the needs 
of expanded reproduction. We will take the fictional example of water 
energy to try to illustrate this point (any resemblance to agricultural 
bosses who grow corn to feed American cattle would be purely coincidental):
* First, there is informal appropriation. This is when nature appears 
only as a free gift that contributes to the conditions of possibility 
for accumulation, without needing to be transformed to integrate it into 
the production process, like an abundant source of water energy in a 
perfectly accessible riverbed. There is then only externalization 
(nature is understood as a positive externality) and subordination of 
the water element to the needs of valorization.
Formal appropriation involves internalizing natural problems in the face 
of conditions that no longer allow nature to be considered a free gift. 
Indeed, the source of water energy, once drawn directly from the river, 
is no longer available due to the drying up caused by the river's 
numerous diversions. Several employers are vying for control. The 
capitalist machine must then identify the natural phenomenon as a 
process that needs to be mastered in order to optimize the production 
process. Capital must invest to benefit from the energy. It will probe 
the underground watercourse and the various aquifers, drill, and install 
a pump and piping to continue its production process. Capital then 
partially emerges from the scavenging it was engaged in during informal 
appropriation, because natural conditions are integrated into the 
commodity cycle and, in fact, acquire value. Indeed, the boss has to pay 
for the water, that is, the means of accessing water to ensure the 
prosperity of his business. There is no transformation of the natural 
phenomenon. The boss still relies on a source he does not control. Since 
nature is now valued, the aim is to devalue it as much as possible by 
ensuring maximum use to make the business profitable. What we are then 
witnessing is more of a kind of outright plundering, and plastic 
tarpaulins shaped like basins appear everywhere in the region as private 
pantries.
* Real appropriation, which corresponds to the specifically capitalist 
mode of production, changes its modality:
"The real appropriation of nature by capital will consist, on the 
contrary, in seeking to adapt the very materiality of natural resources 
as closely as possible to the requirements of capital valorization 
(Bihr, L'Ecocide capitaliste, vol. 2: p. 127)."

The goal, therefore, is to exploit the potential of raw nature by 
developing its decomposition and mastering its constituent elements. We 
shift from an extensive and predatory vision to an intensive one, much 
like in labor. The objective is now to decompose natural elements to 
access the fundamental processes of raw nature and direct energy into 
the machinery system. Aided by SpaceX (Elon Musk's nightmare company), 
the local agricultural federation has missiles loaded with silver iodide 
manufactured to burst the clouds before they reach their neighbors. In 
exchange, they are simply asked to buy shares in a SpaceX subsidiary, 
which is about to produce sufficient quantities of water in the 
laboratory, a process initially intended to supply the first city on 
Mars. This was without taking into account the damage silver iodide 
inflicts on the ecosystem. After a few rotations, it becomes impossible 
to grow anything in the area. The SpaceX subsidiary closes and the small 
agricultural businesses in the region find themselves ruined on all fronts.

The appropriation of nature as a means to achieve profit.
Real appropriation, as real subsumption, is the only phase that truly 
revolutionizes the use of the active agent that is the natural 
substrate. The objective is clear: to increase productivity, accelerate 
capital turnover, and strengthen the production process so that it is 
not subject to the vagaries of "negative externalities."

To illustrate this trend, Bihr uses the Olympic motto to classify the 
different ways of forcing nature: citius, altius, fortius (faster, 
higher, stronger):
* The first concerns forcing nature to produce something it doesn't 
produce spontaneously. Here, he focuses particularly on the agricultural 
industry and all the work of domestication: separating species, 
standardizing seeds, eliminating pests, separating the biological 
process from its environment, and disrupting biological rhythms.
* The second concerns forcing nature to produce something it doesn't 
produce spontaneously. Here, he discusses artificial materials such as 
metal alloys, concrete, plastics, semiconductors, GMOs, synthetic 
fabrics, and even transhumanism.
* A third modality of real appropriation consists of artificially 
reproducing a new "socio-nature," that is, a natural substrate entirely 
reconstructed by capitalism, for capitalism. We are talking here about 
all the reconstructed reserves, such as wetlands and forest 
monocultures, which still exist as financial assets, directly or 
indirectly, and which are nevertheless presented to us as the ultimate 
heritage solution for "preserving nature."
Bihr uses the transformation of corn cultivation as an example to 
illustrate the combination of three methods: seed standardization, 
sterilization, and genetic modification. The real appropriation is the 
exploitation of nature for the benefit of capital to produce a 
specifically capitalist socio-nature.

Capitalist hubris
Before defining this socionature adapted to the concrete abstraction of 
capitalist value, Bihr wishes to revisit what he calls capitalist 
hubris, a section intended to make it clear to everyone that capital has 
no other goals than accumulation and that this primary objective 
determines everything else.
Capital is an endlessly expansive process within a material context that 
itself has concrete limits. Without the capacity to control the social 
production generated by a system based on the private ownership of the 
means of production and the resulting impossibility of coordinating the 
necessarily contradictory, because competitive, interests, capital will 
never be able to meet the needs and limitations that do not correspond 
to its thirst for accumulation.

This structurally expansive system makes it impossible to control the 
development of productive forces, which inevitably leads to aberrant 
resource extraction. Indeed, socially necessary products are only 
determined once production has taken place. Ultimately, it is the market 
that determines the success of any given commodity. Thus, production is 
controlled ex post, or after the fact. The waste is certainly 
monumental, but the configuration of the mode of production allows for 
no alternative. As long as the market prioritizes utility, there can be 
no other way. Dreaming of state capitalism, which the left dresses up in 
the trappings of "ecological planning," will change nothing, since this 
fractal pattern is also replicated at the level of geopolitical 
interests, through our cherished borders.

Bihr provides a concrete example of responsibility for the damage caused 
by climate change. Although this change is indeed recognized as 
originating exclusively from the states of the Global North, these 
states refuse to compromise their profit margins and interests to 
maintain their position. Fair play is not in vogue, and they demand the 
same efforts from countries of the Global South in the fight against 
global warming.

At the micro level, the same pattern is replicated. Company management 
has power over its means of production, provided that their exploitation 
results in the expected increase in the value invested. The only guiding 
principle is the accumulation of capital.

From a technical standpoint, these characteristics lead to a 
necessarily frenzied productivism. Capital's power of abstraction has 
made it possible to coordinate, through financial power, a series of 
capitalist operations without the capitalist(s) at the head of these 
enterprises being compelled to any form of physical presence. This is 
the culmination of the separation between the means of production and 
the producers. Lacking unity, the two elements are now variables that 
the capitalist manipulates at will through the power of money, for the 
sole purpose of reinforcing that power. Only the crisis of 
overproduction, and its attendant destruction, brings about the dreaded 
final judgment.

Far from being a series of bad decisions, these are the rules of the 
game, as Marx reminds us, quoted by Bihr:
"Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes the constant 
increase of capital invested in an industrial enterprise a necessity, 
and competition compels each individual capitalist to submit to the 
external constraint of the immanent laws of the capitalist mode of 
production. It forces him to continually expand his capital in order to 
preserve it, and he can only expand it by means of progressive 
accumulation." (Marx in ibid., p. 269)

To win the market, production costs must be lowered by revolutionizing 
the labor process to increase capital productivity. This revolution also 
ensures direct confrontation with workers. This is why real subsumption 
is a characteristic of a specifically capitalist mode of production. It 
also allows for the maintenance of a reserve army of labor, sidelined by 
productivity gains, whose existence ensures workforce flexibility and 
plays a significant disciplinary role in the daily course of capitalist 
production.

Increased productivity inevitably impacts the ecological footprint, and 
this impact is not proportional, as expanded reproduction is both 
extensive and intensive. Given the limitations of raw materials, the 
energy required to extract them is greater.
The counterpart to overproduction is overconsumption. Consumption 
patterns are imposed, leading to major disruptions for the population. 
This is how we end up with countless stores filled with disposable 
textiles while the housing crisis rages and public services essential 
for population growth are severely depleted, with the exception of the 
police and the military.

Planned obsolescence ensures a satisfactory turnover of capital. We are 
taught to throw things away and buy new ones. And companies in sector 2 
(consumer goods), particularly monopolies, spend fortunes on marketing, 
the "effort to sell," to better ensnare us. The impoverishment of social 
life condemns us to project our desires onto artificially valued goods, 
the reflection of a world of objects.
At the same time, manufacturers ensure that production processes lead to 
rapid wear and tear on goods. Washing machines, light bulbs, printers, 
software: their lifecycles can be artificially determined. A recent 
example is the transition to Windows 11, which left countless computers 
unusable with the end of support for Windows 10. This is an example of 
an oligopoly's ability to control its turnover. Our social life is 
impoverished, sometimes defined exclusively by our relationship to 
ephemeral goods, caught in the web of commerce with no other way out.

This unlimited growth poses an unsustainable challenge to the Earth 
system. Bihr provides some benchmarks. If we start with an annual growth 
rate of 2%, the system's needs double in 35 years. They triple in 37 
years at an annual growth rate of 3%. They quadruple in 35 years at 4%. 
They quintuple in 33 years at 5%. It is impossible for a quantity to 
grow infinitely in a finite system. No amount of adjustment-neither the 
so-called immaterial economy, for which residents of regions hosting 
data centers bitterly observe the false promise of immateriality, nor 
the circular economy, an operation that aims to make us responsible for 
a reproductive cycle we do not control, nor energy sobriety-will allow 
capitalism to adapt its functioning to the rhythm of the Earth, or 
rather, to adapt the rhythm of the Earth to its accumulation needs. This 
mode of production is doomed to the prospect of short-termism and a 
headlong rush into capitalist competition.

Abstract Nature
"If every mode of production is also a production of nature, then 
capitalism must be understood as generating a specific socionature." 
(ibid., p. 337)
What, then, is this capitalist socionature? Bihr proposes defining it as 
an abstract nature, a concept initially borrowed from Jason Moore in his 
definition of capitalism as "world ecology." The author offers us a 
synthesis of how capital relates to nature, shaping it not only to its 
own use but also to its own image. It is from this effort at synthesis 
that we will understand that nature, far from being an immaculate 
by-product, is precisely the result of the use this system makes of it.

The use of nature for the reproduction of the human world is not unique 
to capitalism. The transformation of nature is, in fact, characteristic 
of the human species and the foundation of the various artifacts that 
have allowed the species to prosper. Moreover, it is not exclusively 
human. But in capitalism, this relationship is now purely instrumental, 
obliterating all other dimensions of this relationship (ethical, 
aesthetic, mystical, religious, etc.). We are thus witnessing an 
anthropological reductionism whose objective is to eliminate all 
obstacles to capital accumulation.
This process leads to reification, or in other words, "objectification." 
Reification begins with an externalization of the workings of nature 
through an experimental scientific approach that freezes so-called 
natural laws to produce knowledge capable of profiting from the observed 
processes within the framework of nature's appropriation by the 
production process. By examining the various stages of the emergence of 
modern scientific thought, we observe that the articulation, even the 
synchronous nature, of this development with capitalism is evident. In 
this context, we understand that the initial great separation is also 
embodied by scientific thought, which drew inspiration from capitalist 
production models to propose concepts such as mass, energy, and 
information, and which ultimately defined nature as a unified entity 
obeying its own laws that must be instrumentalized to achieve the 
desired social ends, in this case, accumulation. The systemic conception 
(cybernetics, structuralism, systems theory), characterized by the 
automation of the production process, completes this development, at 
least for the time being, with the advent of agentic AI.

While the core of the specifically capitalist conception of socionature 
is constructed within the production process, the circulation process 
also plays a role, since it is this process that embodies the effective 
(de)valuation of nature through commodification. The culmination of 
commodity fetishism arrives with fictitious capital, equivalent to loan 
capital. Regardless of the "securitized" commodity, the same interest 
rate can be applied, thus achieving the capitalist ideal A-A'. In this 
way, everything, including fragments of nature, can become hosts to the 
value form, as exemplified by the carbon market discussed in the first 
volume.

Nature's value-form implies its privatization, alienation, and 
transformation according to market demands, thereby entailing processes 
of individuation, typification, isolation, and measurement, like any 
commodity. It has to fit the box to be sold. Market valuation leads to 
the devaluation of that box. Nature becomes a concrete abstraction, like 
any commodity, through market exchange, under the principle of general 
equivalence. Everything must be able to have a value. The dictates of 
circulation provide the guidelines for the renewal of the production 
process with the aim of expanded reproduction.

Nature, now abstracted, is liable to suffer the same fate as living 
labor. Bihr reintroduces the concept of vampirism, articulating 
reification and (de)valorization. As a reminder, vampirism rests on a 
double determination: it feeds on its prey but, in doing so, it imparts 
its nature to its prey, transforming it into a vampire. This is the 
essence of subsumption, which has transformed labor power, while feeding 
on it, into dead labor and an appendage of that dead labor. According to 
Bihr, we can apply the same schema to nature. Indeed, capital 
appropriates it as force and matter put to work, but, in doing so, it 
transforms it, notably through knowledge, into a concrete abstraction 
capable of joining the dead elements of the production and reproduction 
process.

This is how he concludes the second volume, with a successful gamble: 
having applied the critical materialist method of analyzing capitalism 
in its relationship to nature. By refocusing the debate on this issue, 
he makes a crucial contribution to future struggles. If we consider the 
specifically capitalist socio-nature, the fetishization of an 
immaculate, alternative nature offers no leverage for addressing the 
heart of the problem. Ecological and social struggles do not coexist. 
Their foundation is inseparable from capitalism, whose sole driving 
force is accumulation, leaving behind the disasters of an undeniably 
deadly world, devoid of any sorting. The end of the world is the end of 
the month. The end of the month is the end of the world. And there is no 
reason why capital should call it quits on its own.

Mich

The review of the first volume appeared in the May issue of Courant 
Alternatif.

https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4743
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