Autonomist Marxism and World-Ecology. For a political theory of ecological crisis

Abstract

The paper aims to articulate an "encounter" between Autonomist Marxism (AM) and World-Ecology (WE), that is, between two theoretical paradigms increasingly discussed at the global level, but so far never analyzed in close connection to one another. AM is a current of unorthodox Marxism that is characterized, methodologically, by the partiality of the point of view, the constitutive unity of thought and conflict, the ambivalence of the working-class condition (labor force / abstract labor within capital, working class / living labor against capital), and the centrality of class composition. Politically, AM proposes two main innovations: the practice of refusal of work, and the so-called Copernican revolution, according to which class struggle comes first and capitalist organization follows suit (instituting, therefore, a causal and incremental link between workers' unrest and capitalist development).
WE can be defined as a global conversation that develops the analysis of the world-system along distinctively environmental lines: capitalism, therefore, does not have an ecological regime, but rather is an ecological regime, i.e. a specific way of organizing nature. Beyond any residue of Cartesian dualism, the concept of world-ecology refers to an original mixture of social dynamics and natural elements that make up the capitalist mode of production in its historical development, and in its tendency to become a world-market. In this framework, the capitalist theory of value imposes space as flat and geometric, time as homogeneous and linear, and nature as external, infinite, and free.
The aim of this paper is to show that, although the two perspectives relate to the question of the (ecological) crisis in a very different way, they can be effectively integrated if juxtaposed on a different level - that of the historico-political analysis of the question concerning the environment. Both approaches originally rework Marx’s crisis theory, but they do not completely avoid the polarization that marked its evolution: development vs. catastrophe.
AM tends to renew the tradition that sees the crisis as a moment of development and historicizes it through original interpretations of the cycle of struggles 1968-1973, claiming its defeat was “peculiar” as it imposed a change in the structure of capitalist valorization in the direction of an expansion of its accumulation base. The causes of this transition are to be found in the intersection between the financialization of the economy, the cognitization of labor and, above all, the becoming-productive of the sphere of social reproduction.
On the other hand, WE elaborates the so-called “breakdown” theory in unprecedented fashion. The starting point is a convincing reconstruction of the historical succession of long waves of economic cycles through an articulation of underproduction (of ecological surplus) and overproduction (of commodities). Thus, WE provides an instrumental ecological counterpoint to the socio-centric reading of AM through the fundamental notion of negative value — the most innovative analytical element with regard to the neoliberal form of crisis theory. However, the general discursive strategy follows that of every breakdown theory ever since the “classical” debate within the Second International. Therefore, it is aimed at showing that, although the crises of the twentieth century were developmental (that is, they fostered the capitalist restructuring at a higher level), the crisis we live through nowadays presents itself as epochal in that its result is deemed to be an inevitable collapse.
The convergence between the two paradigms —which is actually a rather demanding theoretical exchange, and as such require some deep rethinking for both positions— can take place through a re-reading of the historical process of politicization of ecology. Although it is customary to date it between the mid-seventies and the following decade —i.e. after the great cycle of Fordist conflicts— in recent years a different hypothesis is being tested: that such politicization occurred not only a decade earlier, but also, and above all, because of rather than despite the struggles of the workers' movement (in close connection with the rise cycle of revolutionary feminism). With particular regard to the Italian context, the struggles against noxiousness, which multiplied between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, and often in opposition to the confederal unions, were the first to fiercely criticize the so-called monetization of risk; that is,the idea that wage increases and/or organizational benefits could “compensate” for exposure to pollutants, even hazardous ones. Although this criticism would never become common sense of trade union action, such occurrence does not deny that it was first of all the strength of organized workers that blew up the compensatory mechanism and (im)posed the ecological question as politically unavoidable. Only at a later stage will the environmental movement emerge along with a new post-materialist sensitivity among the urbanized intermediate strata.
Against this background, the paper proposes an analysis of neoliberal green economy —i.e. the capitalist attempt to internalize the ecological limit, turning it from obstacle to valorization, through an innovative strategy of accumulation— as simultaneously assuming the form of development (in accordance with AM hypothesis) and of anti-development (in accordance with WE hypothesis). From this plausible "convergence" could then emerge a political interpretation of the contemporary ecological crisis, capable of questioning the relationship between capitalism and nature by avoiding both catastrophism and the elective affinity between the logic of profit and the logic of environmental protection.
In this unprecedented context, WE can grasp the second aspect through the concept of negative value, which correctly conveys the message that climate change, health-related emergencies, and the narrowing of waste borders make the ecological crisis an unprecedented everyday reality in the history of capitalism. In fact, negative value implies an internal contradiction of the dynamics of capital and, above all, an ontological challenge to the valorization project, therefore to capitalist civilization tout court.
On the other hand, AM is in a privileged position to make sense of the shift from the rhetoric of limits to growth, which somehow alluded to environmental noxiousness as a crisis of capitalism, to a rhetoric of growth of limits, which identifies these latter as drivers of accumulation, as “filters” that turn the ecological constraint into a crisis for capitalism. Furthermore, AM can now show that commodities traded on environmental markets contain value as they are produced by hybrid units of labor (reproductive / informational) and nature (financialized). However, the developmental potential of such green economy must also be relativized. In fact, the process of enhancing the “free” activity of nature seems, at least until now, to be unable both to “repair” the environmental damage already done and to provide widespread social protections potentially able to compensate for the class polarization that invariably accompanies the multiplication of financial dividends. What neoliberal capitalism lacks is an inclusive mechanism capable of (partially) socializing financial profits either through a decarbonization of the economy, or through the formation of a new middle class (or both).