On 9/7/2020 4:24 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0921800920300938
Highlights
•
We provide empirical evidence that supports the theory of
ecologically unequal exchange.
•
High-income nations are net importers of embodied materials,
energy, land, and labor.
•
High-income nations gain a monetary trade surplus via this
resource appropriation.
•
Lower-income nations provide resources but experience monetary
trade deficits.
•
The observed inequality is systemic and hampers global
sustainability in multiple ways.
This is a fine group of researchers, long promoting a richer sense of
North-South power than in most eco-unconscious accounts of imperialism.
The idea of unequal ecological exchange is one that, back in 1972, Samir
Amin had flagged:
The partitioning of the continent which was completed by the end of
the nineteenth century multiplied the means available to the
colonialists to attain capital at the centre. We must remember that
their target was the same everywhere: to obtain cheap exports. But
to achieve this, capital at the centre - which had now reached the
monopoly stage - could organise production on the spot, and there
exploit both the cheap labour and the natural resources, by wasting
or stealing them, i.e. by paying a price which did not enable
alternative activities to replace them when they were
exhausted.//This problem of the looting of natural resources is
beginning to be studied with the present-day awareness
of'environmental problems', although the term is ambiguous.
He still thought this work to be highly important, e.g. in a 2018 book
published by MR just after his death:
capitalist accumulation is founded on the destruction of the bases
of all wealth: human beings and their natural environment. It took a
wait lasting a century and a half until our environmentalists
rediscovered that reality, now become blindingly clear. It is true
that historical Marxisms had largely passed an eraser over the
analyses advanced by Marx on this subject and taken the point of
view of the bourgeoisie – equated to an atemporal ‘rational’ point
of view – in regard to the exploitation of natural resources.
There's a new set of tributes to Amin over at MR Online, with quite a
few essays:
https://mronline.org/2020/09/04/celebrating-the-life-of-samir-amin/
I think three modifications of the article circulated above could be
made. First, I miss the sense of not just North and South, but also the
layer of subimperial economies that are in many cases now the frontline
of extractivist corporate exploiters. Here's more:
http://roape.net/2018/04/18/towards-a-broader-theory-of-imperialism/ (In
the article above, this dilemma is treated as if China is solely the
transmission belt, but the idea of subimperialism, drawn from Mauro
Marini and David Harvey, is much broader.)
Second, there's an interesting dilemma with respect to future
generations' ability (and 'right') to draw upon non-renewable resources
we are currently depleting.
Third, there's the matter of whether progressives and anti-extractivist
movements can count 'natural capital' - central to the bourgeois
institutions' methodology for assessing environmental 'values' albeit
not discussed in the article above - without resorting to market systems
such as carbon trading or offsets. Fierce debating rages on that point.
I've done a few rough-draft teaching videos on these questions, below;
and have been working on lots more essays if anyone's interested. Again,
they follow in the anti-imperialist tradition of Amin and of the first
Marxist scholar of Africa, Rosa Luxemburg, who was acutely aware of the
capitalist/non-capitalist articulations when it came to defining
imperialism:
https://www.mattersburgerkreis.at/dl/rpOsJMJKOoOJqx4KooJK/JEP_1-2019_Rosa_Luxemburg_Bond.pdf
Cheers,
Patrick
*
<https://vimeo.com/438888520><https://vimeo.com/438888520>*
*_71 - Natural resources and environmental crises
<https://vimeo.com/438888520>_*
*<https://vimeo.com/438536419>*
*
<https://vimeo.com/438536419><https://vimeo.com/438536419>*
*_72 - Conflicting Environmental Resource Narratives
<https://vimeo.com/438536419>_*
*<https://vimeo.com/439922580>*
*
<https://vimeo.com/439922580><https://vimeo.com/439922580>*
*_73 - Natural Riches, Curses and Resource Depletion
<https://vimeo.com/439922580>_*
*<https://vimeo.com/439922729>*
*_<https://vimeo.com/439922729>_*
*_74 - African and SA Natural Resource Stewardship
<https://vimeo.com/439922729>_*
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