Not all countries can afford to purchase additional food when there are widespread crop failures or short supplies and the price of food jumps on the world market. In 2008, such price spikes led to food riots in twenty-eight countries. Yet at the same time, there were sufficient global food stocks.2 As one example of what was available during that year when so much suffering occurred, about 30 percent of the enormous U.S. corn crop was converted to ethanol to feed cars instead of people.
It’s not overpopulation that’s the problem; it’s unequal distribution of wealth and resources. Quite simply, people are hungry or starving because they are poor and unable to exert effective demand in the market, which requires money. The wealthiest 10 percent of the global population uses about 60 percent of Earth’s resources and is responsible for about the same portion of global pollutants released into the biosphere. The so-called population problem is in reality a wildly skewed social system, with gigantic waste built into the economy and overconsumption by wealthy people.3 In the United States, working people are constantly blamed for consuming too much, but in fact 38 percent of all consumption in 2012 was by the richest 5 percent.4
Ecological havoc is often attributed to human nature: our greedy and destructive instincts cause us try to dominate nature, regardless of the consequences. Although there are certainly examples of past civilizations that have caused lasting local or regional ecological harm, others have tread lightly, surviving and flourishing in ways that allowed land and water to regenerate by developing relatively low-impact agricultural systems. In many cases the practices of humans have resulted in a more biologically diverse local ecosystem than would have been the case otherwise. As historian Neil Roberts observes:
It is easy to fall into the trap of describing human impact on the natural world solely in terms of ‘degradation’ and ‘impoverishment,’ especially when considering issues such as soil erosion or deforestation. In fact, agriculture—at least in its pre-modern form—has generally been an agent of ecological diversification. It caused the relative homogeneity of primeval forest ecosystems to be replaced by a mosaic of … ecosystems, created and maintained by human action, and their fates came to be intimately associated with particular modes of agricultural production.5
Ecological damage done by ancient peoples occurred because of class dynamics, low levels of technology, and lack of knowledge of long-term impacts, not because of any ingrained tendency to destroy. Once such damage occurred, many ancient agricultural societies adapted to the changes they had caused or moved elsewhere. In the Mediterranean region they modified their landscapes, building terraces to reduce runoff and erosion; or they raised perennial crops more adapted to hilly land, such as olive trees and vineyards. Wheat, which requires annual soil plowing, was then grown on the more level fields or purchased by selling olive products and wine. Human societies have generally been able to adapt and modify practices as mistakes were made or in the face of environmental change over which they had no control, such as multi-year or multi-decade droughts.6
Some people feel that too much growth is the cause of the ecological crisis. We need to move to a zero growth economy, they say, and the way to do that is by changing our “growth paradigm.” Instead of focusing on the gross domestic product (GDP)—which is the measure of all goods and services produced annually in a country—economists and the media should focus on a gross national happiness index, which would measure people’s quality of life. Others have likened the perpetual growth of capitalist economies to a societal addiction, requiring therapies to help cure the addiction.7 But growth paradigms or addictions do not create the system—they are products of the system. Simply altering what is measured, how something is described, or undergoing societal therapy will not change the trajectory of an economy.
Other explanations for the ecological crisis tend to be variations of the “growth problem”: for example, there are people, sometimes referred to as “neoprimitivists,” who believe that industrial society itself is the problem and therefore we should return to a simpler lifestyle, hunting and gathering, presumably with many fewer people. Then there are the “green capitalism” advocates who maintain that people aren’t buying the right things—everything would be fine if we all just bought “green” stuff. Some explanations get a little closer to the heart of the matter, pointing to the need for more regulation so that businesses would not be allowed to pollute at will.
But these explanations for the environmental and social problems we face focus on symptoms while ignoring the root cause of the global crisis—the capitalist system. More insidiously, each of these explanations—overpopulation, individual overconsumption, human nature, growth paradigms, value judgments—have something in common: everyone is to blame for the problem. Or, in the words of Pogo the possum (in a poster designed to mark the first Earth Day in 1970), “We have met the enemy and he is us.”8 But if “we” are the problem, this absolves the elite and the economic system from which they benefit.
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
In its simplest terms, capitalism is a social and economic system based on private ownership of the means of production (the factories, equipment, land, etc.) for the purpose of making commodities (goods and services) in order to sell them at a profit. Most people have no way to make a living on their own and must work for those who own the land, factories, and other businesses. Business profits derive from the unequal relationship between labor and the owners of capital, with workers paid less than the value they add during the production of commodities. One way that business owners continually try to increase their profits is through greater control and exploitation of their workforce.
Markets, though not a defining feature of the system as some think, are needed in order for sales to occur and profit to be obtained.
A commodity can be as simple as an apple or as complex as a car or a computer made from minerals mined from all over the world. And types of services vary widely: haircuts, hotel accommodations, equipment repair, or heart surgery. The goods and services produced by businesses embody human labor power and natural resources. And though commodities may have a genuine use, their real value in this economic system is that they can be sold for profit—for more than the cost of making them.
Position of Labor
Because workers depend upon capitalists for their livelihoods, they are subservient to the owning and managerial classes. One way that business owners continually try to increase their profits is through greater control and exploitation of their workforce. They can do so because of the unequal power relationship between labor and the owners of capital. Individually, workers are not normally able to negotiate their wages, benefits, and working conditions. They gain power relative to capitalists by coming together to form unions, so they can use their collective strength, including the ability to stop work by striking. This is what makes unions so important to workers in capitalist economies. That is why capitalists oppose unions and try to stop their formation, while fostering anti-union sentiment in the general population through their indirect control of the media and politicians.
Whenever their power is weakened, workers are commonly forced to work harder (“do more with less”), any benefits they obtained through previous labor struggles such as paid pensions and healthcare coverage are reduced, eliminated, or have to be exchanged for employer promises not to downsize or move production elsewhere. Their miserly pay increases are not commensurate with increased productivity or increased cost of living.
Conversely, when workers have organized strong unions and incorporate elements of social justice into their demands (such as equal pay for women and defense of immigrants), the pendulum of social power swings toward them. This back and forth battle between how the extra value generated by workers is divided, what proportion goes to the capitalists and what goes to the workers or into government social programs, is a constant struggle between opposing interests. It is this sometimes hidden, sometimes
