Kicking off the Agricultural Green Party debate
by Anandi Sharan on February 9
Marx wrote in Capital that
“Freedom, in this sphere [the realm of natural necessity] can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature”.
[In Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environm... ]
No one should be misled into thinking that environmental politics is anything new.
He criticised everything from the destruction of soil to the waste of human excrement in London which was tipped into the sea instead of being recycled.
Let us read the first passage again:
“Freedom, in this sphere [the realm of natural necessity] can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature”.
John Bellamy Foster explains that:
The term “metabolism” (Stoffwechsel) was introduced as early as 1815 and was adopted by German physiologists in the 1830s and 1840s to refer to material exchanges within the body, related to respiration (Bing 1971; Caneva 1993). But the term was given a somewhat wider application (and therefore greater currency) in 1842 by Liebig in his Animal Chemistry, the great work that followed his earlier work on the soil, where he introduced the notion of metabolic process (in the context of tissue degradation). It was subsequently generalized still further and emerged as one of the key concepts, applicable both at the cellular level and in the analysis of entire organisms, in the development of biochemistry (Liebig [1842] 1964; Brock 1997, p. 193; Caneva 1993, p. 117). Within biological and ecological analysis, the concept of metabolism, beginning in the 1840s and extending down to the present day, has been used as a central category in the systems-theory approach to the relation of organisms to their environments. It refers to a complex process of metabolic exchange, whereby an organism (or a given cell) draws upon materials and energy from its environment and converts these by way of various metabolic reactions into the building blocks of proteins and other compounds necessary for growth. The concept of metabolism is also used to refer to the regulatory processes that govern this complex interchange between organisms and their environment (Fischer-Kowalski 1997, p. 120). Leading system ecologists like Odum (1969, p. 7) employ “metabolism” to refer to all biological levels, beginning with the single cell and ending with the ecosystem.
Our struggle should be understood in this sense. The environmental crisis is obviously not only global, though today everywhere we talk more easily about global changes (climate change – which in any case is unstoppable, biodiversity loss, which also is irreversible) but also about all the other levels of environmental reality on the land and in the fields and in the towns where we can still act more rationally. Of course the reality is global. Capitalism has had 300 years to spread its tentacles everywhere thanks to its harnessing of oil and coal and gas and nuclear energy.
But as we do not only live in the air, but also on land, we are necessarily part of nature as we experience it on the land and between each other, and we need to come together as pragmatists wherever we are to engage in practical environmental politics.
For this we need to decide which technologies, for example, but also which ideas, are useful in agriculture to reverse the destruction of the last 200 years. – so let us read it out a third time:
“Freedom, in this sphere [the realm of natural necessity] can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.”
How we do this even as the land is grabbed, the seas polluted, water drained out of the ground and the soils destroyed? This is our struggle. But as we struggle it is good to remind ourselves that we have truth on our side. It is blind capital that is blind. It is we who have our eyes wide open. India can establish food self-sufficiency provided it is a sincere mission shared by the entire country. Provided we restrain capital from further destroying human society and nature.
Thus let us add to the lists of politically pragmatic ideas the idea, and I really think we can hardly repeat it to too often, that we must work to “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under [our] own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for [our] human nature.”
Capitalism destroys us and ultimately itself. But humans are more than blind agents of capital. This is what gives us hope in the future.
Capping and sharing the finite atmospheric resources in India under cap and share is a good national policy to control commercial energy and give human beings back some control over energy. Renewable energy technologies in soil sciences, textiles, housing, reliable and affordable health are nothing other than technologies that enhance our ability to ‘govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way’.
Our religions taught it. Now we have to do it without religion because religion is not scientific. The human metabolism with nature is a scientific endeavour which is even more exciting than religion because instead of seeking within, we are seeking without, daring to challenge each other to ‘govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way’. It is exhilarating even as we take on the greediest forces that have ever been on this earth, government and private.
Consolidation of land, the national guaranteed minimum wage, and a renewed effort at gram sabha level or town ward level management through what Marx calls groups of ‘associated producers’ are part of the rational way. Let us be frugal! Let us be scientific ! Let us price fossil fuels out of the market and pay as much as we need to for renewable energy technologies! They are after all are nothing but technologies that enhance our ability to govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way.
It is really perfectly sensible. And getting rid of the elites and their nuclear power stations is the first necessary step towards a rational management of the land in the sense that Marx envisaged.
And by the way, you can also consider throwing out those weird species of environmentalists who consider a tiger sanctuary more important than the agriculture of the people in the villages.
This is just the beginning of the Green Party of India’s struggle for freedom and a rational agricultural policy.
Let the debate begin!
P.S. Read Pierre Rabhi’s International Movement for Earth and Humanism and click translate.
Read also Amulya Reddy and Srilatha Bathliwala's analysis of energy inputs and outputs in a village. 1993_10_SBAKNNDF.POP.pdf .
They say: "Children contribute a crucial 30%, 20%, and 34% of the labour for gatheringfuelwood, fetching water and grazing livestock respectively. Their labour contributions are vital to the survival of families, a point often ignored by population and education planners."
P.P.S. If you have a vision you can also strike to keep out certain technologies and advocate others. For example, the view of the business community [ Arvind Singhal: tackling food inflation ] is that
"In the near term, the easiest and simplest actions are just to do with two fundamental policy changes. One is relating to scrapping of all restrictions on marketing and movement of agricultural and horticultural products within India and eliminating some of the spoilage on account of innumerable stops at various octroi and other check-posts by totally removing such local taxes on perishable produce. The second relates to encouraging modernisation of distribution and retail system in the country without getting into a totally irrelevant debate on the origin of the massive funding required for this modernisation in the entire farm to customer supply chain."
But is it really true that it does not make any difference who owns the country's food distribution and processing and packaging processes? Shall it be Walmart / Reliance, or say COOPERATIVELY OWNED ENTERPRISES run on ultra-modern lines with super-efficient men and women working for OUR OWN ASSOCIATION OF PRODUCERS?
by Anandi Sharan on February 9
Marx wrote in Capital that
“Freedom, in this sphere [the realm of natural necessity] can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature”.
[In Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environm... ]
No one should be misled into thinking that environmental politics is anything new.
He criticised everything from the destruction of soil to the waste of human excrement in London which was tipped into the sea instead of being recycled.
Let us read the first passage again:
“Freedom, in this sphere [the realm of natural necessity] can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature”.
John Bellamy Foster explains that:
The term “metabolism” (Stoffwechsel) was introduced as early as 1815 and was adopted by German physiologists in the 1830s and 1840s to refer to material exchanges within the body, related to respiration (Bing 1971; Caneva 1993). But the term was given a somewhat wider application (and therefore greater currency) in 1842 by Liebig in his Animal Chemistry, the great work that followed his earlier work on the soil, where he introduced the notion of metabolic process (in the context of tissue degradation). It was subsequently generalized still further and emerged as one of the key concepts, applicable both at the cellular level and in the analysis of entire organisms, in the development of biochemistry (Liebig [1842] 1964; Brock 1997, p. 193; Caneva 1993, p. 117). Within biological and ecological analysis, the concept of metabolism, beginning in the 1840s and extending down to the present day, has been used as a central category in the systems-theory approach to the relation of organisms to their environments. It refers to a complex process of metabolic exchange, whereby an organism (or a given cell) draws upon materials and energy from its environment and converts these by way of various metabolic reactions into the building blocks of proteins and other compounds necessary for growth. The concept of metabolism is also used to refer to the regulatory processes that govern this complex interchange between organisms and their environment (Fischer-Kowalski 1997, p. 120). Leading system ecologists like Odum (1969, p. 7) employ “metabolism” to refer to all biological levels, beginning with the single cell and ending with the ecosystem.
Our struggle should be understood in this sense. The environmental crisis is obviously not only global, though today everywhere we talk more easily about global changes (climate change – which in any case is unstoppable, biodiversity loss, which also is irreversible) but also about all the other levels of environmental reality on the land and in the fields and in the towns where we can still act more rationally. Of course the reality is global. Capitalism has had 300 years to spread its tentacles everywhere thanks to its harnessing of oil and coal and gas and nuclear energy.
But as we do not only live in the air, but also on land, we are necessarily part of nature as we experience it on the land and between each other, and we need to come together as pragmatists wherever we are to engage in practical environmental politics.
For this we need to decide which technologies, for example, but also which ideas, are useful in agriculture to reverse the destruction of the last 200 years. – so let us read it out a third time:
“Freedom, in this sphere [the realm of natural necessity] can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.”
How we do this even as the land is grabbed, the seas polluted, water drained out of the ground and the soils destroyed? This is our struggle. But as we struggle it is good to remind ourselves that we have truth on our side. It is blind capital that is blind. It is we who have our eyes wide open. India can establish food self-sufficiency provided it is a sincere mission shared by the entire country. Provided we restrain capital from further destroying human society and nature.
Thus let us add to the lists of politically pragmatic ideas the idea, and I really think we can hardly repeat it to too often, that we must work to “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under [our] own collective control rather than being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for [our] human nature.”
Capitalism destroys us and ultimately itself. But humans are more than blind agents of capital. This is what gives us hope in the future.
Capping and sharing the finite atmospheric resources in India under cap and share is a good national policy to control commercial energy and give human beings back some control over energy. Renewable energy technologies in soil sciences, textiles, housing, reliable and affordable health are nothing other than technologies that enhance our ability to ‘govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way’.
Our religions taught it. Now we have to do it without religion because religion is not scientific. The human metabolism with nature is a scientific endeavour which is even more exciting than religion because instead of seeking within, we are seeking without, daring to challenge each other to ‘govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way’. It is exhilarating even as we take on the greediest forces that have ever been on this earth, government and private.
Consolidation of land, the national guaranteed minimum wage, and a renewed effort at gram sabha level or town ward level management through what Marx calls groups of ‘associated producers’ are part of the rational way. Let us be frugal! Let us be scientific ! Let us price fossil fuels out of the market and pay as much as we need to for renewable energy technologies! They are after all are nothing but technologies that enhance our ability to govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way.
It is really perfectly sensible. And getting rid of the elites and their nuclear power stations is the first necessary step towards a rational management of the land in the sense that Marx envisaged.
And by the way, you can also consider throwing out those weird species of environmentalists who consider a tiger sanctuary more important than the agriculture of the people in the villages.
This is just the beginning of the Green Party of India’s struggle for freedom and a rational agricultural policy.
Let the debate begin!
P.S. Read Pierre Rabhi’s International Movement for Earth and Humanism and click translate.
Read also Amulya Reddy and Srilatha Bathliwala's analysis of energy inputs and outputs in a village. 1993_10_SBAKNNDF.POP.pdf .
They say: "Children contribute a crucial 30%, 20%, and 34% of the labour for gatheringfuelwood, fetching water and grazing livestock respectively. Their labour contributions are vital to the survival of families, a point often ignored by population and education planners."
P.P.S. If you have a vision you can also strike to keep out certain technologies and advocate others. For example, the view of the business community [ Arvind Singhal: tackling food inflation ] is that
"In the near term, the easiest and simplest actions are just to do with two fundamental policy changes. One is relating to scrapping of all restrictions on marketing and movement of agricultural and horticultural products within India and eliminating some of the spoilage on account of innumerable stops at various octroi and other check-posts by totally removing such local taxes on perishable produce. The second relates to encouraging modernisation of distribution and retail system in the country without getting into a totally irrelevant debate on the origin of the massive funding required for this modernisation in the entire farm to customer supply chain."
But is it really true that it does not make any difference who owns the country's food distribution and processing and packaging processes? Shall it be Walmart / Reliance, or say COOPERATIVELY OWNED ENTERPRISES run on ultra-modern lines with super-efficient men and women working for OUR OWN ASSOCIATION OF PRODUCERS?
Comments
Capitalism = Terrorism
Communism = Impossible
Reading this article, the author seems to want his country, India, to sell its future economic development to the developed nations and try and return the urban working class to the land. That's just turning back the clock of history.
India has its own national bourgeoisie. It can develop without selling out to the imperialists.