Comment on Saito Kohei "Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards Degrowth Communism"│Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

(UK) Martin Empson

Translated by Guanyu Zhu, proofread by Qian Wen

Since the late 1990s, John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm, Ian Angus ( Ian Angus and many other writers and thinkers have found the core of ecology in the work of Karl Marx. Kohei Saito's Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (2017) develops this idea further through a detailed analysis of Marx's unpublished manuscripts. Thought, explores how he understands the interaction between human society and the wider world. Marx's work in ecology is often summed up in the concept of a "metabolic rift"—that is, capitalism creates cracks in ecological systems through the organization of production. This theoretical tool is increasingly being used to understand the extent to which the complex environmental crises facing humanity have developed. But Marx's work, always devoted to human emancipation—a guide to action—was used to develop strategies for coping with capitalism struggling with the transition to socialism. It is in this area that Saito Kohei's latest book makes his most important theoretical contribution.

In the introduction, Saito argues that "Marxism will have a chance of revival if it not only provides a deep critique of the capitalist mode of production but also provides a concrete vision of a post-capitalist society that will enrich the debate." and social movements.”

The whole book is divided into two parts. The first part is the explanation and defense of ecological Marxism. This part has similarities with Saito's earlier works as well as those of writers such as Foster. But as he did in his earlier writings, Saito offers brilliant insight into Marx's unpublished work in the discussion. While defending Marxist ecology and exploring Marx's dialectical understanding of nature and social metabolism, Saito also seeks to understand why Marx's ecological studies have been neglected for so long.

According to Saito, the answer to this conundrum has two aspects. The first is "the incompleteness of the critique of (Marx's) political economy," and the second is Engels's interpretation of Marx's thought when he edited and presented Marx's posthumous works (especially the second and third volumes of "Das Kapital"). A lack of clarity of understanding caused him to overlook key insights from his friends and comrades. Saito claims that Engels "marginalized" Marx's ecological critique.

Here, Saito draws on his in-depth knowledge of the new Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (or MEGA2) to make this point. The project has been publishing all of Marx's manuscripts, through which Saito demonstrates an in-depth study of scientific and anthropological texts in the last years of Marx's life that demonstrate his exploration of non-capitalist societies and the natural world different relationships between. In addition, Marx was working on scientific texts that further developed his own understanding of ecology. Engels, he argues, ignored and "simplified" this aspect of Marx's work. According to Saito:

Although Engels was interested in ecological problems under capitalist production, it had an undeniably philosophical and transhistorical systematic character, so that he eventually rejected Liebig's concept of metabolism, and in the 1940s The concept of "urban-rural opposition" conceptualized in the 1960s was satisfactory. In addition, in Engels' discussion of the reality of freedom and pre-capitalist society, he holds a more one-way view of historical development, based on the gradual understanding of the natural laws of modern natural science.

While Saito makes some interesting arguments, I don't think there's enough evidence to back this up. Importantly, I think Saito focuses too much on the text and ignores the context of the socialist movement itself. This fundamentally shapes how Marx's ideas are used and developed, and Engels should not be blamed for this. In particular, Saito does not discuss in detail the socialist features of the Second International, which were reformist in nature, emphasizing the Promethean and gradualist aspects of Marx's thought. This is the crux of the debate within the SPD, which Rosa Luxemburg has engaged in against Bernstein. However, this critical period in the development of Marxist theory has been neglected in Saito's work.

Also, on a related note, the importance of the Soviet Union in developing "Marxism" in the 20th century cannot be underestimated. In particular, the Soviet Union being the banner of socialism while maintaining an economic system based on accumulation meant that they also wanted to downplay aspects of Marx's thought that were critical of an economic system based on endless expansion.

Degrowth Marxism

Regarding the second half of Saito's book, Marx's argument as a "de-growth communist" is debated and explained. Here, Saito shows how Marx's early thinking evolved over his lifetime. As Saito argues, the importance of this section lies in responding to Marx's critics who view his thought as Eurocentric or who view history as inescapably progressive. As other scholars (such as Kevin B. Anderson) [1] have pointed out, Saito demonstrates Marx's thinking on the relationship between anti-colonialism, national liberation, and revolution outside Western Europe and North America. There is a major breakthrough. Saito argues that Marx, in particular, broke with his earlier understanding of historical development, which essentially believed that the world would follow a path similar to Western European capitalist development. As Saito said:

When Marx analyzed the problem of "real subsumption" in the Economic Manuscripts 1861-1863, he underwent a major theoretical shift that caused him to completely rethink his previous assumptions about the progressive nature of capitalism. He realized that productivity does not automatically prepare the material basis for a new post-capitalist society, but rather intensifies the plundering of nature. However, due to the neglect of the concept of "productive forces of capital", it is widely misunderstood that Marx still naively believed that history has a "view of progress" similar to the laws of nature.

Importantly, Saito believes that Marx's thinking on the key issue of "communism" has changed. He said: "It is not that the roads to communism have diversified, but that Marx's conception of communism itself changed significantly in the 1880s, due to his careful reflection on the shortcomings of earlier theory and historical materialism. One-sidedness.” Saito once again draws readers’ attention to Marx’s textual scrutiny on “Natural Science and Pre-Capitalist Society,” and this deepens his theory of metabolism. During this period, Marx increasingly attempted to understand the different ways in which non-Western and pre-capitalist rural communes organized the metabolism between man and nature as their source of life force. From the perspective of Marx's metabolic theory, it is not enough to approach his study of non-Western and pre-capitalist societies in terms of public ownership, agriculture, and labor. In other words, his research on non-Western societies involves not only the disintegration of public ownership under colonial rule, but also ecological implications. In fact, with his growing focus on ecology, Marx came to see the plundering of the natural environment as a manifestation of the central contradiction of capitalism.

From these studies, Marx concluded that there are "fundamentally different forms of social organization of the metabolic interaction between humans and nature". This means that rather than seeing "the development of the productive forces of capital as the key to communism," it is more important to rationally manage the metabolism of society. This brings us to Saito's point: Marx was a "de-growth communist," because growth in productivity would make society less sustainable, and any sustainable world would have to be built on an entirely different vision.

I don't have any particular objection to this assessment. Saito explained it very well. But in my opinion, his analysis of the text means he's missing key insights. Saito writes that Marx's vision of communism changed radically in the 1880s. But it follows a pivotal moment in Marx's revolutionary activity: his support for the work of the Paris Commune and the analysis of the event itself.

Saito pointed to the failure of the Paris Commune, which he said had "undercut revolutionary hopes" in Western societies. But the Paris Commune not only gave Marx "hope," it provided him with a clear illustration of how a democratic socialist state could work. That is why it is disappointing that Marx's brilliant work, The Civil War in France, is not discussed in detail in Saito's book. In this work, Marx explores how a revolutionary commune emerges from the struggle of the working class, smashes the capitalist state, and creates an entirely new society. In this society the commune would be "the political form of even the smallest hamlet". Such a vision of an insurrectionary democratic communism from below, based on a radically different organization of productive forces, is undoubtedly crucial to understanding Marx's vision of a sustainable communism. Naturally, the work became central to Lenin's own vision of the revolutionary practices workers needed to create a state of their own based on popular democracy.

Beyond that, I think Saito's book is essential reading for socialists trying to understand the process Marx went through in developing his ecological thought. In fact, this final section on "abundance" is a crucial response to those who think that Marxism is not applicable to future societies. For example, Saito writes:

Marx envisioned a society in which differences in natural and social abilities and talents among individuals no longer appear as social and economic inequalities, but as individual uniqueness because they complement each other and supplements. In other words, instead of imposing a consistent and unified model on everyone for the sake of equality, communism aims to break down the gap between ability and skill differences and economic inequality in capitalism through social organization and institutionalization. connect. The purpose of this social organization and institutionalization is to eliminate the destruction of human society and the natural environment brought about by capitalism.

I was especially impressed by Mr. Saito's emphasis that his emphasis comes from his focus on "productivity" that "abundance" is not about the quantity of technology, but "sharing and cooperation by distributing wealth and burdens so that members of society more equal and fairer. Mr Saito criticized the vision of "left accelerationists", who believe that "full automation" can provide luxury for all, but they ignore the boundaries of the earth's resources. Instead, Mr. Saito reminds us that the democratic vision of mutual cooperation runs deep in Marx's communism. This stems directly from Marx's ecology, and is why this book is so important.

February 18, 2023

Note:

[1] https://resolutereader.blogspot.com/2020/07/kevin-b-anderson-marx-at-margins-on.html

Original link: https://resolutereader.blogspot.com/2023/02/kohei-saito-marx-in-anthropocene.html?m=1