ues with capitalism . I would first like to argue against this perception, as well as offer Marxism as a viable alternative to it.
In large part, climate change is due to what economists call “externalities” . Externalities are things that don’t affect the balance sheet and therefore firms don’t worry about. The firm produces iron and steel. It gets paid for these outputs. It also produces smoke. This smoke is a nuisance, but the firm is not charged, so it has no incentive to limit how much smoke it belches out. The firms do not have to pay for this: the working class does. It pays through lung and chest diseases.
Capitalism is literally killing the working class – and the planet – just by functioning normally. That is why the idea that the market treats the environment ‘efficiently’ is ridiculous. Firms minimize costs because that is the best way to make money. But they don’t minimize costs that others have to pay – externalities. Why bother? But these are real costs, just like iron and coal. They are just costs that have to be born by the rest of us.
So much “profitable” economic activity – mountaintop and strip mining, clear-cutting of trees, overfishing, the production of chemicals and plastics, using fossil fuels to feed an ever-growing demand for energy, agribusiness monoculture, and much more-has damaged the environment and/or depleted the natural resources . It is profitable for the capitalists but not the people as a whole. This is not the result of a corrupted “crony capitalism” or anything of the sort. It is simply capitalism working as intended.
It is impossible to construct a “green capitalism” that does not result in environmental destruction. An article in Monthly Review summarizes the green capitalist program this way: “‘green capitalism’ seeks to bind together two antagonistic notions. To be green means to prioritize the health of the ecosphere, with all that this entails in terms of curbing greenhouse gases and preserving biodiversity. To promote capitalism, by contrast, is to foster growth and accumulation, treating both the workforce and the natural environment as mere inputs” . This is, however, at odds with the systemic workings of capitalist production.
A “green capitalism” would mean curbing carbon emissions and promoting biodiversity, at the expense of growth. Green capitalism necessarily involves cutting back, but the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production necessitate a “pushing onwards.” In his book Green Capitalism: the God that Failed, Richard Smith explains that “ecologically suicidal growth is built into the nature of any conceivable capitalism. This means … that the project of a steady-state capitalism is impossible and a distraction” . In particular, “under capitalism, the whole point of using resources efficiently is just to use the saved resources to produce even more commodities, to accelerate the conversion of even more natural resources into products.” This cannot be avoided under capitalism without causing economic collapse. “Insatiable consumerism is an everyday requirement of capitalist reproduction… No overconsumption, no growth, no jobs” . Consider that “more than two-thirds of market sales, and therefore most jobs, depend on direct sales to consumers while most of the rest of the economy, including the infrastructure and military is dedicated to propping up this consumerist ‘American way of life’” .
Capital’s need to grow is the logical outcome of accumulation. The objective limits of capital are determined, in the short run, by saturation of the market and, in the long run, by exhaustion of resources. When its productive potential is stymied, it turns to financial speculation, which only increases the gulf between the capitalist class and the rest of the species. Even capital that does not directly destroy resources therefore contributes to – and is dependent on -environmental degradation. Smith puts it this way: “Consumerism and overconsumption are not ‘disposable’ and cannot be exorcised because they are not just ‘cultural’ or ‘habitual.’ They are built into capitalis