Page 14 - RedFlagJune14

REDFLAG | 14 JUNE 2021 PUBLICATION OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE REDFLAG.ORG.AU

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This page: A boy collects
plastic from a stream
in Dhaka, Bangladesh
PHOTO: Reuters; Page
13: Deforestation in
the Amazon rainforest
PHOTO: Adobe Stock

the ruling class, capitalism also severs it among under capitalism doesn’t appear, on the surface, to metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life
workers. The peasants under feudalism had a relate to our immediate material needs at all. itself. The result of this is the squandering of the
direct and transparent dependence on the land This combination of factors—the capitalist vitality of the soil, which is carried by trade far
for their subsistence. But with this came a degree class not having any real incentive to protect the beyond the bounds of a single country”.
of independence that isn’t afforded to workers environment, and the working class having no Prior to the emergence of capitalism, the pro-
under capitalism. The peasants had to give up a control over it—lies at the heart of capitalism’s ductive life of society was more dispersed through
portion of their produce to the lord, but outside unique destructiveness. The “logic” of capitalism a patchwork of villages and towns. There was no
of that they were relatively free to labour as it is one in which maintaining the health of society’s clear divide between the city and the country as
best suited them. And no matter how unfree they metabolism—either externally in its relationship there is today. One of the consequences of this
were in a political sense, their capacity to sustain with nature, or internally in its distribution of was that the nutrients that went into agricultural
themselves was at least guaranteed by their direct goods among the population—only features production could easily be recycled back into the
access to the land and their possession of the tools to the extent that it assists the accumulation of soil from human, animal and plant waste.
necessary to work it. wealth by the ruling class. Once capitalism’s drive to profit kicked in,
For capitalism to be put on firm footing, this The one thing the capitalist class cares about however, the imperative was to centralise produc-
direct relationship of the peasants to the land above all else is profit. No matter what the con- tion to increase efficiency and reduce the costs of
had to be severed. They were, over a number of sequences, whether on the natural environment, labour and so on. Industry became more and more
centuries, forcibly “freed” from the land in order human health or anything else, if business owners concentrated in urban centres. The waste from
that they could be “free” to be employed in the can continue to expand their pool of capital, they this human mass, instead of being returned to
rapidly expanding capitalist industries. Workers, will see it as a success. And, due to their lack of the soil, was simply dumped into rivers or the sea.
for Marx, are defined by their lack of ownership means of production, and their dependence on As well as making cities like London unbearably
of the means of production. They are no longer selling their labouring capacities to a capitalist in smelly and disease-ridden, this dynamic also led
dependent on the land for their subsistence, but exchange for a wage, workers have been harnessed to declining soil fertility, which worsened as the
rather on the preparedness of a capitalist to give to the same destructive wagon. nineteenth century progressed.
them a job and pay them a wage. To understand the idea of the metabolic rift Farmers became desperate to find alternative
Even if they might still maintain a more or less better, it will help to provide some examples. For sources of nutrients to regenerate the soil. The
direct relationship with nature in their work, they Marx and Engels, writing when capitalism was first to go were the bones from historic battlefields
have no control over or stake in this at all. Their still only in its infancy, the increasing split be- like Waterloo. Then, following the discovery that
dependence is on the wage they receive, rather tween the country and the rapidly growing cities guano—more commonly known as bird shit—
than on, for example, the continuing productivity illustrated the point most clearly. In volume 3 of contained high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus
of the land on which they work. Capital Marx explained that capitalism crucial for crop growth, there was a global scram-
Many workers under capitalism are, of “reduces the agricultural population to an ble to secure supplies of this precious resource. In
course, concerned with the destruction of the ever-decreasing minimum and confronts it with 1856, the US passed the Guano Island Act by which
environment. But unlike with the peasantry under an ever-growing industrial population crammed it annexed and occupied more than 100 islands
feudalism, whose need to maintain a sustainable together in large towns; in this way it produces known to be rich in guano.
relationship with the natural world is clear and im- conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the So the disruption of one aspect of the metab-
mediate, the question of environmental protection interdependent process of social metabolism, a olism between human society and nature led