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Capitalism Nature Socialism

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Prospectus
Published online: 25 Feb 2009.

To cite this article: (1988) Prospectus, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 1:1, 1-6, DOI: 10.1080/10455758809358354

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455758809358354

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 Prospectus

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

A Journal of Socialist Ecology

The idea of a journal called Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

was inspired by a graduate seminar given in the Fall, 1988 under
the auspices of the Sociology Board, University of California,
Santa Cruz. The subject of the seminar was "capitalism and
nature." It brought together a dozen or so people-graduate and
undergraduate students and visitors from San Francisco, Berkeley,
Los Angeles, and Nicaragua — who were (and are) working on
diverse aspects of the general topic of the contemporary world
economic and ecological crisis. Most of the seminar members are
environmental activists, as well as researchers and scholars. Thus
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besides our discussions of individual papers, we also had many

informal exchanges about the relationship between environmental,
public health, worker health and safety, and other social
movements, including and especially national independence
struggles, on the one hand, and international capital, global
accumulation, and uneven and combined development, on the
other.

The seminar clarified some old issues pertaining to problems

of global environment and ecology, and raised more new issues, as
the materials in this first issue of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
testify. The seminar also "discovered" the unexceptional fact that
to our knowledge there is no systematic Marxist or neo-Marxist
account of the dialectics of ecological and economic crisis trends
and tendencies. Nor of the process of global restructuring of
world economy and "environment" in the crucible of economic
crisis. Nor of struggles of environmentalists, ecologists, feminists,
urban movements, and labor and national independence
movements over the form and content of this global restructuring.

1
 Even though environmentalism constitutes one of the most
powerful social movements in the United States and other
countries, and ecological destruction and crises now ravage the
world, Marxists and socialists have made few or feeble attempts to
theoretically explain these facts in a coherent way. This has
created a theoretical void which we hope this journal will help to
fill.

The seminar also "discovered" another unexceptional, but

bigger, fact that there is no satisfactory account of the dialectics of
history and nature which locates itself on the interface between
natural and social science, or between history and metahistory, and
which has a standard for judging what nature ought to be as
contrasted with what it is today.

Perhaps these "discoveries" arc justification enough for a

publication which focuses on theoretical aspects of the problem of
"capitalism, nature, socialism." There are, however, other
justifications, one being far and away more important than any of
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the others. The subjects of human ecology and environment are

fast becoming the issues in the waning years of the 20th century,
ones widely recognized not only by governments and international
organizations but also by millions of people worldwide who have
found out for themselves that their economic, social, political, and
cultural struggles for survival against poverty and misery are
simultaneously ecological struggles.

The practical sign that human ecology and environment may

become the dominant issues of the 21st century, then, is the rapid
growth of social movements which in one way or another are
fighting the trend toward worldwide destruction of universal
nature. We particularly mention the "greens," who have
parliamentary representation in most European and several other
countries, most importantly in West Germany, where the Green
Party is a major political player partly because it is a radical and
socialist party.

2
 As "ecological Marxists" and "socialist ecologists" (or
sympathizers or fellow travelers), we would stress that struggles
against the "biological exploitation" of workers and farmers
worldwide will take their rightful place alongside traditional
struggles against economic exploitation, which are intricately
related to the former.

We submit that the conjuncture of social and ecological

struggles is a new and profound historical fact which requires
massive rethinking of what Rudi Deutsche once called left-wing
"time-honored" and "time-worn" political formula and slogans.

Capitalist relations of production, it was thought (and is

thought in most left circles) "hold back" the development of
productive forces, hence raising the task of "socialist
construction." In ecological Marxism, not only capitalist
production relations, but existing socialist production relations, as
well, "destroy" productive forces and conditions of production,
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hence the task is in effect "socialist reconstruction." Clearly,

different political perspectives emerge depending on one's point
of view on this issue.

World ecological and environmental issues will almost

certainly take on more importance in the future. The peoples of
the world are beginning, in many different and often contradictory
ways, to address the practical problems of our relationship with
ourselves and with the rest of nature. This means that there is
growing awareness not only of what are often ideologically called
"limits of nature" but also of how these "limits" have been
economically and politically produced, i.e., the fact that they are
expressive of social limits, or irrational and destructive forms of
social organization and concepts of need:

There is also a growing self-consciousness globally of the

processes whereby human beings transform nature and by so
doing transform ourselves, hence creating a multiplicity of
objective and subjective conditions and posing new dangers and

3
 new opportunities. Signs that this is true include the flourishing
field of environmental history, the development of historical and
cultural geography and "dialectical" evolutionary biology, and
ecological science itself. Scholars in these fields, as well as new
areas of study in the humanities and social sciences such as
feminist theory, history of consciousness, environmental
sociology, radical urban sociology, and political economy of
nature all share a massive skepticism of Baconian-Cartesian
dualism and positivism, which are the life blood of capitalist and
bureaucratic socialist rationality.

Further, while there are growing numbers of studies of the

highest quality of particular pieces of the "history-nature" puzzle,
these studies are more often than not theoretically uninformed or
grounded in naturalistic concepts of society or positivistic
methods which cannot bridge science and praxis. This is one
reason, perhaps the main reason, why most activists and
organizers, at least within our limited field of vision, rarely have a
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solid theoretical understanding of the political dangers and

opportunities involved in their work, the effects of practical work
on the economic tissue of capitalist society, or the way that
"ecology" and "environmentalism" may be used or abused
ideologically within the dominant discourses of late 20th century
capitalism. We hasten to add that this has little or nothing to do
with the personal capacities of those who have devoted their lives
to the struggle to reconstruct "nature" but rather with the lack of
development of theoretical understanding of the whole problem—
an understanding which needs to be constantly enriched and
transformed by practical experience and when (and only when)
appropriate, codified into secure local or regional or international
discourses on particular aspects of the whole problem. Put another
way, we want to emphasize the importance of theory and the
simple truth that environmental, health, urban, and other policy is
only as good as the theory on which it is based; and also stress that
there is a growing recognition that development policy in the
Third World, economic and social and foreign policy in the First
World, and, last but not least, bureaucratic planning in the Second

4
 World are all more or less bankrupt.

Despite the facts and speculations enumerated above, there is

presently no English-language vehicle for regular communication
and scientific exchange between people all over the world who are
addressing the general problem of "capitalism, nature, socialism"
within Marxist, neo-Marxist, feminist-Marxist, ecological Marxist,
and user friendly post-Marxist discourses. While such highly
regarded left journals such as Race and Class and New Left
Review sometimes publish materials on the subject, their compass
is much broader than that of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. And
while such specialized publications as Antipode and International
Journal of Health Services address the subject in critical and
exciting ways, their province is more specialized than we imagine
CMS's to be.

We can support this judgment by a catalogue of subjects

which we hope CNS will address. These include reconsiderations
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of philosophies of external and universal nature; critical reviews of

the literature on the "human impact on nature"; critiques of
modern ideologies of "human nature"; discourses between
feminism, social ecology, and Marxism; and bourgeois and critical
concepts of ecology. These subjects also include more down to
earth topics such as imperialism, uneven and combined
development, and ecological crisis; capitalist exploitation of labor
and economic and ecological crisis; human laborpower, external
nature, and urban and rural space as conditions of production;
social movements organized around the defense and
reconstruction of external and universal nature; and crisis and
transformation within environmental and labor movements. In
addressing these and related subjects, we envision CNS as having
an international perspective, essential in this epoch of international
capital and global ecological and economic crisis. Last but not
least, we want to address the issue of "really existing socialist"
nature and ecological problems and prospects in the socialist
countries.

5
 Thus, this first issue of CMS, which is frankly experimental.
It is partly a vehicle for sharing the work done or presented on the
subject in the Fall, 1988 seminar, and partly an organizing device.
The latter means that the future of the journal will rise or fall
according to its initial reception by the 300 or so individuals who
we know (or know of) are working on the general subject
theoretically and also theoretically minded activists—individuals
like yourself who live in many different countries and work on
many different aspects of the subject. Put another way, what you
are holding in your hands is intended to be neither a simple
offering to other scholars and scientists nor a finished product but
something in between, an idea in material form, as it were.

While we have not prejudged the form of CMS and kind of

materials to be published (articles; work-in-progress; notes;
reviews; etc.), frequency of publication, delegation of editorial and
other responsibilities, finances, and other practical questions, we
have taken the following steps. First, we have raised the money to
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publish this issue, which, as we have said, is intended as an

organizing tool, as well as a way to communicate our work to
others. Second, we are developing an editorial group in the San
Francisco Bay Area, which includes philosophers as well as social
scientists, empirically minded scholars as well as those who are
content to do strictly theoretical work. Third, we are establishing
an international editorial group beginning with some of our
original group who live or will reside in other countries (Canada,
Federal Republic of Germany, and India). Fourth, we have
compiled the names of more than 300 individuals and research
institutes, including yourself, who we have reason to believe will
share some if not most of the diverse perspectives included in the
first issue. We look forward to receiving your comments,
criticisms, and ideas about the project itself, as well as the
materials herein. - J.O'C