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-Altvater, Elmar The Future of the Market. An Essay on the Regulation of Money an Nature after the Collapse ofActually Existing Socialism(London-New York: Verso) Pgs. 188-222.

The Future of the MarketAn Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature after the Collapse of Actually Existing Socialism

ELMAR ALTVATER

Translated by Patrick Camiller

3. Value and Matter

An ecological analysis of economic processes must therefore encompass both changes in value and changes in nature.Of Marx's critique of political economy one can preserve whatever one wishes; what is clear is that, unlike classicaland neoclassical economics, it: is aware of the significance of time and space for economic processes. Forms ofsocialization and even abstract market procedures are located within the spatio-temporal system of coordinates of bothhuman and natural history. The socializing effect: of market procedures is imperfect: it requires a cultural and natural'substructure', without which 'autonomous individuals' cannot relate to one another as social beings. On the other hand,natural and cultural conditions are continually being changed by market-coordinated and market-stimulated economicactivity.

In order to account for this fact, Marx introduces a number of related concepts: the dual reality of commoditiesas use-value and value; the dual character of commodity-producing labour (concrete and abstract labour); thedifferentiation of the commodity into commodity and money, and of the production process into labour process andvalorization process; and the duality of the forces and relations of production within the dynamic of the mode ofproduction. Marx takes the category of the dual character of labour as crucial to an understanding of politicaleconomy; and indeed it creates the possibility of grasping economic processes at once as transformations of values(value-formation and valorization) and as transformations of materials and energy (labour process, 'metabolic:interaction' between man and nature).

Marx, writing more than a hundred years ago, could not fully gauge the scope of this concept, as it has beendrawn out in thermodynamic approaches to economics or in the preoccupation with the current and impendingenvironmental crises. Alfred Schmidt's reflections on the concept of nature in Marx: -which were published not thatlong ago -show the limits of an analysis of the 'metabolic interaction' of man (human practice) and nature in which anaive humanization of nature substitutes for serious consideration of its ordering principles. For example:

While natural processes independent of men are essentially transformations of material and energy, humanproduction itself does not fall outside the sphere of nature. Nature and society are not rigid1y opposed. . . .[For] the content of this metabolic interaction is that nature is humanized while men are naturalized.

Today we know that the 'humanization of nature', achieved through 'metabolic interaction' between man andnature, can have the opposite effect of destroying the natural conditions of human life. As to the 'naturalization of man',it may actually denote a process of industrialization in which genetic engineering brings the production of man as atechnical artefact within the bounds of possibility: man as raw material and spare part, an undignified thing. GntherAnders's pessimistic diagnosis of the 'antiquation of man' is, in this respect, more appropriate than the humanist beliefin progress of Leo Kofler or Ernst Bloch, about whose 'obsoleteness' Anders waxes so ironic. Marx's critique of politicaleconomy is unique among the contributions of economic theory: it affords a first link in the conceptualization of thelink between the system of values and the regularities of nature, without turning nature into economics - as inneoclassicism - or naturalizing the economy in an anthroposophic manner. Marx himself took pride in having been the

first: 'to examine, critically the twofold nature of the labour contained in commodities': labour first as creator of value,but second as 'a specific productive activity appropriate to its purpose, a productive activity that assimilated particularnatural materials to particular human requirements.

Labour, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which isindependent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism betweenman and nature, and therefore human life itself... When man engages in production, he can only proceed asnature does herself, i.e. he can only change the form of the materials.

Marx refers in this connection to Petro Verri, quoting some lines he wrote in 1771:

All the phenomena of the universe, whether produced by the hand of man or indeed by the universal laws ofphysics, are not to be conceived of as acts of creation but solely as a reordering of matter. Composition andseparation are the only elements ... [in] the reproduction of value ...and wealth, whether earth, air and waterare turned into corn in the fields, or the secretions of an insect are turned into silk by the hand of man, or somesmall pieces of metal are arranged together to form a repeating watch.

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Only as a result of production for exchange -whereby abstraction is made from the fact that materials and energy aretransformed through concrete, quality-changing labour- does the labour product become a bearer of value and fall underthe dynamic: of the system of values.

The dual nature of labour is due to the form of capitalist reproduction. Superimposed on the dynamic: of the'eternal metabolism between man/society and nature is the historical 'template' of the law of value and marketprocedures. It is not by any natural necessity that the transformation of materials and energy results in the production ofcommodities to satisfy the needs of others - needs which can be announced only through price bids on the market(effective purchasing power). That use-values are brought into being is both natural and necessary: if they were not,human life would collapse. But the creation of values that have to be converted into money on the market is entirely dueto the social formof (capitalist) commodity production and the operation of the money medium. The market trade incommodities, and the need for theoretical analysis to identify the results of the reshaping of nature as values (expressedand measured in money), are in no way affected by any deficiencies of the theory of value; they are bound up with thesocially established mechanisms of selection and evolution in capitalist market economies.

Nature does not create any values and its components do not become values unless they are stirred by labour(Marx) and thrown on the market for exchange. This conclusion is not at all proof of one-eyed vision on the part ofpolitical economy, as Hans Immler has suggested; it follows from the historically specific form of capitalist societies,the only one in which labour functions as a value-creating power. Marx's central purpose was to unravel the socialforms in which labour -in its equally specific form of wage-labour- must stretch itself to the limit to create value, tovalorize capital and to keep the accumulation process underway. Material wealth arises only with the participation ofnature; but only labour creates value. It is the social forms of commodity, money, capital, surplus-value and profit whichdefine the dynamic of a capitalist society - not labour as such, which must be exerted at all times and in all socialformations to reshape nature and appropriate its materials. Moreover, it is the form, of socialization which, in a marketeconomy, mirrors the relation of people to one another and to nature as a natural property of things. To this fetishistic

form corresponds a consciousness that nature can be apprehended only as a thing-like property, not as spheres of life.One-eyed vision in theory, as well as the 'forgetting of nature' in practice, can develop only as a result of the socialforms of reification.

A critique of the 'labour theory of value' (in Marx's version) would have to show how nature could actually takeon value or become capable of functioning as creator of value. In fact: this could only be done by resorting to aphysiocratic: conception that nature, or the land, is alone productive. In this approach - which was already criticized bySmith and Ricardo - only agricultural labour is productive, because it: uses the productivity of the land; all other labourmerely reshapes things, without producing anything, including value. Immler laments the ignoring of nature, which hesees as a subject that is continually producing itself at the same time. But he is not able to decipher the social forms inwhich nature can manifest itself in a 'high1y productive, planful, conscious and single-minded way'. Of course nature isproductive: it brings about the most wonderful creations, of which the evolution of the species over billions of yearssupplies the evidence; and the many catastrophes in the history of the earth show that nature's productivity cannot behad without destructiveness. In no case, however, is nature productive of value, for its creations are by nature notcommodities. Labour, for its part, is productive because in its operation it changes both itself and nature; and incapitalist society it is also productive ofvalue. Value is the social relation in which isolated private labour is linked toaggregate labour, becoming social through the division of labour.

We have said before that economics is in need of supplementation from a thermodynamic point of view. Whatdoes this mean? Materials and energy are transformed during the creation of use-values (extraction of raw materials,their separation or assembly in production, and their transportation to the site of use), during the employment ofuse-values as a means to the satisfaction of needs (consumption), and during the final loss of their property of use value(their becoming waste that is no longer useful for the satisfaction of any human need). For these reasons, an ecologicalcritique of political economy hinges on an analysis of use-value: not as the object of the satisfaction of individual needs(as in the subjective theory of values), nor as a determinant of form in the system of values, but as an element in aninteraction in the course of which entropy increases.

4. Use-Value and Entropy

In the terminology of thermodynamics, use-values may be defined as: (1) materials or energy with low entropy or highorder, such as Verris repeating watch. It is important, however, that (2) the order should be produced with regard tothe satisfaction of specific human needs. Certain materials are isolated from others which are not use-values becausethey are not suited to the satisfaction of human needs; or the combination of various materials (which are useless intheir non-combined form) brings about new products, or concentrates free, available energy for the performance of work(in the sense employed in physics). Lower entropy is not therefore by itself sufficient to define use-value. A car or acomputer is an orderly, high1y organized ensemble of materials. A great deal of intelligence, energy and materials isnecessary to produce the orderly ensemble of materials for the satisfaction of a need, with the result that entropy isincreased in the environment by cars and computers. In their ordering as car or computer the materials have lessentropy than before, precisely because they have required an input of energy that has been taken somehow, somewherefrom the environment. In the process of use-value consumption the product is worn out: at some time or other the carand the computer will break down, because in the ordering of particular materials they can no longer carry out theirfunction, or can no longer be associated and directed in the way that the operational mechanism requires. In other

words, the order falls into disrepair, because the collection of parts no longer obeys the principle of need satisfaction.It might be objected that a car wreck or a non-functioning computer is still a high1y organized structure, evenif it is no longer suitable for the satisfaction of locomotion or data-processing needs. But not every ensemble ofmaterials with high order or low entropy is a use-value. Here we can see the force of Georgescu-Roegens's argument

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that the law of entropy must be interpreted anthropomorphically; low entropy is a necessary but not a sufficientcondition for suitability as use-value. 'No man can use the low entropy of poisonous mushrooms.' It is therefore not lowentropy per se, but only in association with the capacity to satisfy human needs, which constitutes the orderingprinciple.

Environmental entropy, which has been increased by the production of the use-value (car or computer) throughthe complex ordering of materials, rises in the consumption of the constituent materials and energy until finally nothingis left but waste, in the lithosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. The effects on the biosphere may be such as toreduce the complexity of systemic interaction with the abiotic sphere, and thus to lessen the capacity of the entropyremoval as compensation for the entropy increase. The destruction of forests is one example of this: for it reduces thebinding of carbon-dioxide waste in the atmosphere and accelerates the greenhouse effect, which in turn reacts upon allother spheres in ways that we cannot precisely ascertain.

Nothing can be defined as a use-value, then, without regard to the social, biotic and abiotic environment. Butthat is precisely what happens if it becomes a bearer of value and acquires the properties of a commodity within thecapitalist social formation. A car or computer has a price as an individual product, its use-value being put to use by itspurchaser. But it is also part of the ecosystem, and the production and consumption of the use-value changes the naturalenvironment. The air is thorough1y mixed with harmful substances, until it no longer enhances the 'enjoyment of life'but triggers asthma and bronchial disorders. The natural environment thus becomes ever less suited for conversion intoa use-value - unless further energy is consumed. As a rule, materials acquire the property of use-value through thepurposeful expenditure of energy, particularly in the form of labour which separates or recombines them according to aplan (thereby increasing order) or which isolates energy-bearing materials to make their powers useful. In order toobtain useful energy from freely available energy, ft is necessary for energy itself to be expended. That is the point ofenergy balances or the calculation of energy effectiveness. There remains a 'disorderly' mixture of materials which is not'useful and is therefore not a use-value - so long as the materials are not separated through fresh expenditures of energy

(in 'recyc1ing' or air and water purification) or combined in a new way. The more 'disorderly' the mixture of materials,and the less useful the remaining energy potential, the more unfavorable is the energy balance. Thus a residue of wasteair, water and solids from materials that can no longer be changed back into use-values remains even in the most:intelligent recycling business.

The concept of entropy, derived from physics, makes sense only in relation to the definition of a system and itslimiting environment. It describes the state of a (closed) system at temperature tn which consists of entropy at t = 0 andthe integral of all infinitesimal entropy changes through incremental heat: input up to temperature tn. Two aspects areof significance here. The energy and material reserves of the system - ultimately of the universe - remain fixed in anychange of materials and energy (first law of thermodynamics). But their quality (their capacity to perform work or tosatisfy human needs) is reduced in any use of energy and materials: that is, there is an unavoidable increase in entropy(second law of thermodynamics). In other words, in the course of development the energy balance always remains inequilibrium, but the portion of free, unbound and therefore useful energy declines in comparison with that: of bound,dissipated energy that: can no longer be converted into work.

The reason for this is that the conversion of thermal energy into work is possible only if a difference intemperature exists within the system or between system and environment, and energy in the form of heat can be givenoff in a cold depression (environment). Only where there is a difference in temperature can anything move - forexample, a steam-engine, a turbine or a petrol engine. By way of illustration, we might take the simple candle-wheelused in Christmas decorations. Air heated by the candle rises upwards and moves a small, lightweight wheel, so that:the thermal current is converted into kinetic: energy. Both the warm air current and the motion of the wheel cease assoon as the candle burns out, when a temperature difference can no longer be produced through the conversion ofwax-stored energy into heat. In this process entropy increases, since the energy of the candle is dispersed in space and isno longer available in a free, usable form. Another illustration will help, to reinforce the point. A warm body (a stove,for example) gives off heat: energy in a cold space until the temperatures level out assuming that no new energy isprovided through additional coal. Once the temperature potentials are equalized, however, no further interchange orwork takes place. The total available energy has remained the same, but it can no longer be used to perform work.

The concept of entropy may also serve to describe differences in the ordering of substances or systems. It isalways differences in order (caused by planned separation and/or combination) which make a system or substance a

use-value. The order may occur 'by nature' in what Drr has called a 'syntropy island' for example, if aluminium, thecommonest mineral in the Earth's crust, is present in a particularly high concentration as bauxite deposits. Or it may beinduced by an 'ordering' human hand - for example, if the forest biomass contains precious woods, so that tree trunksabove a certain diameter are isolated and concentrated in a timber-yard. Nevertheless, there are certain limits. In thecase of heat: differences, order can be produced if they are levelled out so that: the warm depression becomes evercooler and the order ever more 'disorderly'. The order differences (and heat differences) become ever smaller. Inthermodynamics the limit exists at the absolute zero of temperature (o on the Kelvin scale, or -273 Celsius). Thistemperature can never actually be reached: it excludes any heat difference (third law of thermodynamics). At the limitthere is thus a 'disorderliness' which can in no way be regarded as an ordering principle; even an incremental change inorder, through separation and combination, is no longer possible. All materials and energy are so completely mixed upthat: distinctive structures of substances or sub-systems are out of the question: evolution runs up against an absolutelimit; heat differences are totally eliminated; work can no longer be performed; use-values can no more exist as isolatedmaterials and energy serving to satisfy needs. And if differences come to an end, life itself is impossible. For life is

synonymous with lived difference.

5. Entropy Balance and Systemic Intelligence

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This hypothetical limiting-case is not actually of practical relevance, especially if the unavoidable increase in entropy iskept within bounds by either (a) entropy discharge into the environment, or (b) energy intake from the environment and(c) techniques of materials and energy transformation which increase entropy as little as possible. The assumption of aclosed system should therefore he given up: neither the Earth as a whole nor the sub-systems upon it (societies ofindividual countries, the production process, industry, etc.) are closed systems. The Earth is inserted into the sun'senergy stream - which means that: it takes in short-wave solar energy, converts part of it into growth and work throughthe complex regulation'. This in turn requires that reification - the mirroring of social being by human artefacts, as ifthey had not been produced through transformation of materials and energy and hence the reshaping of nature - shouldno longer characterize the relationship between society and nature. Reified consciousness is an obstacle to thedevelopment of systemic intelligence.

Thermodynamic laws are, on the one hand, independent 'iron' conditions of the interchange or - to use Marx'smetaphor metabolism between labour and nature. Labour itself is both a social activity falling within the compass ofsocial science, and a physical category accessible to study by thermodynamics. If, on the other hand, thermodynamiclaws can acquire relevance within social science and even become a political matter, this is due to the contradictionsbetween the social ordering principle of the valorization of capital and the conditions of the reshaping of natureinvolved in the production of concrete use-values. Such contradictions are today more significant than at the time whenMarx was writing his 'critique of political economy', and so today they must be explicitly grasped within a critique ofpolitical economy and integrated into the theoretical system. Economics can no longer dispense with a theory ofuse-value, in which the concept of entropy occupies a central place.

6. Five Dimensions of the Contradictions between Ecology and Economics

'Dualization', particularly of the valorization process and the labour process, and the resulting contradictions between

the capital-valorization dynamic (the side of form) and naturally given economic conditions of production andreproduction (the side of nature), refer to distinct and not necessarily compatible ordering principles which structurehuman economic behaviour. These can now be reformulated, in such a way as to define more precisely the relationshipbetween economies and ecology.

Quantity and quality

The dynamic of the modern capitalist economy should be understood primarily as a process of quantitative increase ofvalues. Marx's concept of the form of value, or the concept of the general unit of measure in Ricardo or Keynes,theorizes the obliteration of qualitative differences which allows economic results to be measured by quantitativeincreases. Economics thus sets up (in Aristotle's sense) the chrematistic spiral of expanded production and consumptionbeyond household needs. Production of a surplus is imposed by the market in accordance with instrumental rationalityas we have demonstrated at length in Chapter 2.

In the ecological system, however, evolution primarily consists in the fact that qualitative changes orregroupments of energy and materials take place. Insofar as we are talking of closed systems, quantitative changes inenergy balances and material endowment can be ruled out: that is the final conclusion of the first and second laws ofthermodynamics. The amount of energy remains the same, but its quality deteriorates because it can be used less andless for the performance of work. Hence there can be no scarcity in the physical sense, only economic and social scarcitygenerated by transformations of materials and energy and explained by the second law.

Therefore, when we burn fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and nuclei, we are not diminishing the supply of energy.In that sense, there can never be an energy crisis, for the energy of the world is forever the same. However,every time we burn a lump of coal or a drop of oil, and whenever a nucleus falls apart, we are increasing theentropy of the world ... Put another way, every action diminishes the quality of the energy of the universe.

And diminishes it first of all on the Earth, whose fossil energy reserves are by no means unlimited.It might well be objected that we cannot realistically assume the existence of closed systems. In fact, the Earth

is an open system which is provided with energy by the sun and radiates heat into space; and on the Earth itself peopleact within integrated and open systems. Yet it should be borne in mind that, with the quantitivism and expansionism ofthe capitalist world economy, a tendency operates to subject the whole globe, including non-economic life-worlds, to thecapitalist principle of valorization - and thus to create a truly closed economic (not thermodynamic!) system on Earth.Among the consequences, of course, is the fact that energy reserves and rubbish heaps no longer belong to 'anotherworld' but have become part of 'One World'. As Koslowski points out on other grounds, it is 'wrong to assume thatdomination of nature, expansion of the economy, can continue without any limits. The same is true of the reserves ofindividual lifewor1ds, which can also be exhausted by quantitative overmoulding. The result is then an erosion of thesocially necessary 'general other', through which each individual can recognize himself or herself in others.

Time and space versus timelessness and spacelessness

Acceleration of the economic system means that temporal differences within it tend towards zero. Simultaneity is in fact

unattainable, because the irreversible character of transformations of materials and energy, as well as the increase ofentropy, assure the directionality of the 'time-arrow' moving from the past through the present to the future.Asymptotically, however, it is possible to draw closer to the principle of simultaneity by disregarding irreversibility andentropy increase. Georgescu-Roegen distinguishes between Newtonian time t (lower case) and social time T (upper

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case): Time flows through the observer's consciousness. Time derives from the stream of consciousness, not from thechange in entropy.' In the time of Newtonian physics the historicity of time T, and thus the difference between past,present and future, blurs into a mete interval which is ever the same in' all times and places. In sport an ever frustratingattempt to eliminate historical time and to measure only unhistorical intervals is quite the usual thing. Thus the intervalof time which a record sprinter needs to cover a hundred meters - let us say 10.1 seconds - is identical in Los Angeles1980, Nairobi 2010 or Hamburg 1878. But apart from the fact that it is defined by the actual measuring of time on eachoccasion, that interval is completely different in terms of the historical time elapsing between the three acts ofmeasurement.

With regard to space, there is a similar tendency to overcome all the obstacles that make it distinguishable, asdistances are narrowed by the construction of roads, bridges, locks, tunnels, airfields and so on. The quality of space, aswell as that of time, is thus asymptotically reduced to zero: the 'annihilation of space by time' -and vice versa. Theeconomic dynamic of capitalist societies, with its technical preconditions for the reduction of spatial and temporaldifferences, points to the possibility of disregarding nature. However trivial it might seem, to mention it, nature cannotexist without time and space: the disregarding of space and time does away with nature, and since humans arethemselves natural beings, their mode of existence is thereby undermined. Hence theoretical economics which abstractsfrom historical time and concrete space gives us the form of homo economicus, a homunculus in whom nothing butdecision-making rules, subordinated to the principle of reason, are programmed. Seen in this light, Immlers reproachthat economics 'forgets nature' is fully justified.

Reversibility/circularity and irreversibility

In the economic system, the logic of market calculation implies that capital must complete an expansive circulationprocess if valorization is to be achieved. The compulsion to aim for a surplus is inescapable if production processes have

been financed with credits and interest has to be paid. Thus all economic processes must be circular or reversible. In thetraditional circulation diagrams and reproduction schemas (beginning with Quesnay's tableaux conomiques) this isvery clearly expressed. And in the manuals of economics and business management, performance indicators such asprofitability, return on capital or rate of profit indicate the circularity of the flow of capital within the relationshipbetween results and outlay. Should the circle be broken, capital will not flow back multiplied (through profit andinterest) and tendencies towards economic crisis will become unavoidable.In nature, on the other hand, complete processes of materials and energy transformation are characterized byirreversibility. This follows ultimately from the law of entropy. For within a closed system, the natural direction of theconversion of energy and materials is bound up with an irreversible decline in their quality. Such degradation need notapply in an open system, provided that energy and materials can be introduced into the economic system from thesurrounding world. So long as economic theory is conceived with a national focus - as the German termsVolkswirtschaftslehre and Nationalkonomie both strongly suggest - and. so long as it investigates the connections tothe surrounding world merely as flows of value (commodity imports and exports, movements of capital and labourpower, financial flows), then the contradiction between circularity/reversibility and irreversibility hard1y enters into thefield of vision. Admittedly the above-mentioned tendency operates here too. The quantitivism and expansionism of theeconomic system itself are responsible for the fact that the whole planet is subordinated to the capitalist principles of thetransformation of values and materials, so that it becomes increasingly inadmissible to postulate open systems with anenvironment rich in energy and materials and to ignore irreversibilities. Changes in stocks must therefore be taken intoaccount in the analysis of flows.

Profit, interest and entropy change

In the economic system, profit and the rate of profit on real capital, or the rate of interest on money assets, are themeasure of success of microeconomic and - in a mediated way - macroeconomic processes. Marx's own formula for therate of profit (surplus-value over the outlay of variable and constant capital) is no different in its logical structure. Thesame is true of the rate of interest - expressed as a percentage of the money outlay - which is a circular unit of measure

par excellence, formed on the money and capital markets and readable from the daily listings. The rates of profit and

interest have a central importance in the economic system, and not only as measures. Their levels (and their variationsbetween countries, regions or branches) greatly influence the dynamic and direction of economic and socialdevelopment. Economic measurement of the profit-rate (however computed), the interest-rate and the growth-rate iscircular, although it is true that circularity only makes sense if it is expansive, if it has a spiral form. Zero growth ofcapital is therefore not possible.

The ecological measure of the qualitative processes of materials and energy transformation is the change inentropy. It is noncircular, because it measures the diminishing order of materials or the diminishing availability ofenergy in the course of time. A rise in entropy is synonymous; with a decrease in the quality of energy for futureconversion into work. A fall in entropy, by contrast is synonymous with an increase in usable energy (or, by analogy, inusable materials). High rates of profit and accumulation (in terms of values or prices) usually indicate a high throughputof materials and energy: that is, in a closed system, high rates of entropy increase. The rate of profit signals that, in theperiod betweenpastandpresent, a value surplus has been produced over and above the capital outlay. It is at this levelthat the success of the economic system is calculated; the rate of accumulation, and hence the economic growth-rate, are

dependent upon the rate of profit. The rate of entropy increase indicates that, in comparison with the present state ofthings, a lesser amount of useful energy and materials is available in the future (leaving aside energy input from anothersystem, such as the sun). The economic and ecological times of comparison are thus not the same in the measurement ofthe rates of profit and interest, on the one hand, and the entropy change on the other.

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Rationality and irrationality

The logic of economic development - which calls in turn for social regulation - requires an increase in profits, and thushigh rates of profit and growth in the economic system. Employment and rising prosperity are dependent on the actualoutcome. At the same time, natural processes of transformation are organized in such a way that they maintain adynamic equilibrium between entropy intake and entropy discharge, between the Earth as a global system and theuniverse as an environment. This logic dominates development on Earth, considered as the 'Gaia' system of interactionbetween all its spheres over billions of years, on the basis of which evolution takes place. Life would be impossiblewithout system-intelligent organization of an energy equilibrium on Earth; the living biosphere itself organizesprocesses in the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere with a view to the lowest possible rate of entropy production.As Prirogine has argued, the dissipation of energy and materials can itself result in evolutionary structures. Growth anddevelopment, differentiation and complex interaction of the species would otherwise be ruled out. The 'steady-stateprinciple' is thus rational within the ecological system.

And yet, what is rational in the ecological system is irrational in terms of market economics: an economywithout profit. The logic of the market makes it: necessary to aim for a money surplus, without which a microeconomicunit (a firm) has to admit defeat and declare itself bankrupt. National market economies may fall into a debt crisis ifthey are unable to comply with the hard external budgetary constraint, and if the profitability of capital and the rate ofgrowth of labour productivity remain below the rate of interest for any length of time. Conversely, high rates of profitand accumulation indicate success in the economic system and favourable conditions for investment, mass income andemployment. As a rule, however, high rates of accumulation are bound up with high use of energy and materials andmay thus accelerate the entropy increase of the natural system. From this contradiction between rationality andirrationality, it follows that Western instrumental reason necessarily and inescapably involves an irrational element. It

may, of course, be objected that low-growth economies (e.g., in 'actually existing' socialist countries) have been evenmore profligate with energy and materials than modern capitalist economies. But they too strove for high rates ofaccumulation: and in the end they were both ecologically destructive andless successful in terms of market economics.

7.Politicization of the Contradiction between Economy and Ecology

Two problems arise from the contradictory nature of capital valorization and the reshaping of nature, from theinterference between the ordering principles of economy and ecology. First, the raising of productivity - a necessarycondition for the realization of profit and interest - comes about through an extension of individual and social access tonature. The productivity of labour is no mere gift of nature, even if nature does provide 'free productive forces'; rather, itis the result of 'thousands of centuries' of human history and of the reshaping of nature that has taken place during thattime. But it is only in the last few centuries, when the capitalist mode of production has prevailed, that a huge,systematic impetus has been given to increases in productivity. Indeed, ever since the Industrial Revolution, capital hastended to make its expansion as independent as possible of natural constraints and of the limitations of the 'subjective'factor of production, human labour.

The raising of labour productivity may also be interpreted as accelerated entropy increase, if no new 'heatdepressions' of entropy discharge or new sources of energy can be developed. But as the construction of the perpetuummobile is excluded in principle, faster rises in productivity necessarily lead to accelerated entropy increase ~ that is, to aqualitative deterioration in the capacity of energy and materials for work, or, more generally, in their usefulness for thesatisfaction of human needs. It should be stressed that this applies only on the assumption of a closed system. If thatassumption is removed, productivity may also rise through the intake of energy and materials from, or the discharge ofentropy into, systems other than the one in which the productivity increase occurs: whether the otherness is spatial (theshipping of European waste to Africa) or temporal (the plundering of mineral resources from. future generations andthe leaving behind of waste mountains). Martinez-Alier has convincingly shown that the high productivity of modernagriculture (measured in money income) requires the input of cheap energy and plentiful fertilizer from another system,and the replacement of crop variety with a simply and mechanically processable (and easily marketable) monoculture.As a result, however, the quality of the soil may deteriorate and its future productivity be reduced. Insofar as there is

interference between two systems - for example, agriculture and the system from which energy and fertilizer areintroduced - they fashion a system in which, once again, entropy increases through the development of productivity.

Marx, who expected the development of the productive forces to result in human emancipation from thenarrow capitalist relations of production, was not for all that so blind as to overlook the reverse side. In an agriculturesubjected to the regime of industrial rationality,

all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the morelong-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the backgroundof its development . . . , the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, onlydevelops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneouslyundermining the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the worker.

The scale of the destruction of the 'original sources' of wealth increases with productive power - that: is, with the reach

of human activity. In this sense, the 'industrial revolution' has had more far-reaching consequences than the 'neolithic'revolution ten thousand years ago. As we can see, Marx was not at all 'oblivious of nature': he was fully aware of theecologically destructive power of economically productive forces. Only in later Marxist formulations did thedevelopment of the productive forces become fetishized as an intrinsically dynamizing factor of progress.

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Second, the contradictions become more and more politicized in that ecologically destructive processes entail awithdrawal of present and future, actual and potential, use-values. Thus, it may happen that: time-honoured ways ofsatisfying human needs, which used to be taken for granted, will become more difficult and expensive, or even quiteimpossible, to operate. In reaction to this, a potential for social resistance may then take shape.There is a systemic reason why this should happen. The tendency for the use of energy and materials to result in theirqualitative deterioration is measured in terms of capacity to satisfy human needs. Hence the concept of the 'quality' ofenergy and materials has an anthropocentric charge. Purely in terms of energy, nothing changes on Earth and in theuniverse as a result of a hundred atom bomb explosions; but the entropy increase blots out the conditions for human lifeon the planet, or at least for human civilization. That is why entropy increase -and its extent - is not only a physicalprocess. There is no natural necessity for atom bombs to be detonated; nor is there a natural law determining that one,two or five billion people should drive a motor car; the felling or burning of tropical rainforests has nothing to do withbiology, meteorology or physics, but is entirely a question of socio-economic relations and political regulation. And so,if the quality of materials and energy or whole ecosystems deteriorates, with adverse effects on the possibility ofsatisfying human needs, the basis for social conflict begins to accumulate. The natural process of entropy increase isthus intertwined with the social process whereby the rate of entropy increase is determined.

To mobilize social resistance against physical laws is worse than intellectual, but the law of entropy also has asocial dimension which is susceptible to regulation. It would therefore be misleading to postulate, in the manner of theearly Club of Rome or Global 2000 reports, that humanity's resource endowment is given once and for all and musteventually reach a point of natural exhaustion. The first law of thermodynamics states that the energy in the universeremains constant; only its quality changes, in accordance with the second law of entropy increase, and this results ineconomic scarcity and social demands for regulation to deal with scarcity. Society can influence the scale of entropyincrease, though market procedures are by no means sufficient to achieve this because they are part of the problemrather than part of its solution. Koslowski also refers to the fact of scarcity when he writes:

What is scarce is not matter but orderly, living organic nature and qualitatively determined material resources.It is not water as such which becomes scarce, but qualitatively pure water, drinking water... What is scarce arenot material resources in themselves, but structures and orders of nature in which the resources in their pureform and nature itself make themselves available.

In the end, Koslowski is thinking of nature as an 'organic whole', as the 'great organism Earth', which is broken downthrough selective access to particular resources. Nature must be regarded as a 'value' and 'be asserted in politics andeconomics as a value'. But if nature actually is valorized in the economy, the outcome is precisely the destruction ofnature that Koslowski wishes to avoid - even if man, transcends nature 'in the realm of the spiritual. 'Man' canperfectly well recognize nature as a 'value' and, at the same time, place himself under the economic constraints ofvalorization. Equipped with both an ecological ethic and economic rationality, man can still degrade nature.

We cannot, therefore, abstain from an analysis of the social forms of the human interchange with nature, aswell as the forms of social fife. Energy-based approaches to political economy fall short of the mark if they assesseconomic processes in terms of energy balances, or if a 'dull and tedious dispute' is unleashed concerning the valueproductivity of nature, or 'the part played by nature in the formation of exchange-value'. Political economy is notoblivious of nature, but the thesis that political economy is oblivious of nature is itself oblivious of form. Entropyincrease in the production of use-values - that is, in the transformation of materials and energy - is a natural law, but therate of entropy production is a matter for social and political organization and therefore becomes an object of socialconflict. The dimensions of the contradiction between economy and ecology are thus not at all an inescapable humandestiny; they too are capable of being shaped by society.

8. Spatial Polarization and Temporal Piracy

At first sight it appears as if the interferences between economic and ecological crisis may be treated primarily as anethicalproblem, whose solution lies in an ascetic pragmatics of behaviour. Minimize the sharpening of contradictions!Use as little energy and materials as possible! Act in such a way that the natural environment is left for future

generations in no worse a condition than that in which you found it! Do not take away future development options bydegrading today's environment beyond measure! Follow the profit principle, but keep entropy increase within bounds!Observe the principle of responsibility!

Such maxims underlie all those environmentalist approaches which aim for a theoretical or practical'reconciliation' between economics and ecology. Categorical imperatives here serve to ground a practice which seeks outtechniques and forms of social organization which will keep the rate of entropy production at its lowest possible level.Decision-making rules conforming to the principle of rationality therefore build in ecological criteria derived from a'Gaian ethic' (Jos Lutzenberger), according to which the Earth ('Gaia') is a living organism and the flow of energy canbe kept stable only through a complex interaction of biotic and abiotic spheres that is unique in the solar system. Life onearth thus looks after the maintenance of its own preconditions. From this follows the rule of refraining from anyintervention in the biotic and abiotic cycles that might disturb their interaction. However, ethical principles must still beconverted into moral imperatives: they must be universalizable and should not contradict other ethically groundedmoral imperatives. The debate on an 'ecological ethic' has brought to light the inconsistencies of the aim of reconciling

economics and ecology. In practice, the conflict between ecological ethics and other ethically based principles in theThird World makes itself felt when the struggle against poverty today accepts a worsening of the natural conditions offife tomorrow. For universalizable principles cannot be used to decide which generation has greater rights: the hungryof today who need to be fed better, or future generations who will need an undamaged environment. Of course, this is

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no argument against the necessity of ethically based rules to regulate the intercourse with nature, especially sinceself-positing market regulation is not adequate to the ecological conditions of economic activity. If an attempt is madeto base ecological calculation upon monetary values, it will inevitably erect into a principle the characteristics of thecommodity form: reification and the screening out of the natural constraints of production and consumption. If, on theother hand, that principle is discarded, the possibility of economic calculation based upon commodification andmonetization will be curtailed.

Categorical imperatives are insufficient, however, without institutionalized rules of ecological behaviour. Ifthey simply remain imperatives, there will be a constant demand for strenuous personal efforts that threaten to end upin the rationality trap of individual decisions and behaviour: the contribution of individuals to a solution of theecological problem is too limited for their non-ecological behaviour to enter significantly into the overall balance.Ecological asceticism may be moral, but free-riding is rational. Moreover, the coordination of multiple individualactivity is too difficult and too cost1y to be maintained over any length of time. This rationality trap dooms anyapproach based upon never-ending 'campaigns': against the waste crisis, against the expansion of car transport in thecities, or for a boycott of tropical wood. The imperatives must be institutionalized and equipped with sanctions, so thatthey become behavioural constraints for everyone in all areas where there is agreement in society (according to the rulesof parliamentary democracy). Admittedly this raises a further difficulty to which we have already alluded in theprevious chapter. Ecological problems are global and intergenerational in character, and within a national society ofthose living today they can be addressed only with an awareness of vicarious functions.

We have already indicated that economic expansionism pushes outward a number of contradictions that:remained practically insignificant or locally bounded for several millennia of human history. The economic system,originally defined in national terms, loses its tendency to openness through development (and closure) into the modemworld capitalist economy. The 'white patches' on the map of the world are disappearing, and with them the'environments' of the already developed system that began in Europe. First the 'environment' was constituted as an

object of imperialist exploitation, as a colony of the capitalist heartland; but then the capitalist system lost its capacity toachieve compensatory entropy discharge by drawing in materials and energy from outside - from the 'white patches' ofour knowledge, which might be more correct1y seen as 'black boxes' of out ecological ignorance. As the system movedtoward closure, it was forced to increase its own 'systemic: rationality'. Entropy increase was also minimized throughthe dumping of waste on future generations -a temporal rather than a spatial strategy of intergenerationalexternalization.

The mechanisms of the economic system tend to solve problems at first by eliminating the ecological limits ofeconomic quantitivism: time and space. The ordering principle of economics takes nature in its grip and imposes thelogic of quantity, profit, interest and circularity. The extensive answer to the ecological challenge is to open ever newspaces of hitherto 'undisturbed' nature, discharging entropy into them or drawing energy from them in compensation forincreasing entropy -up to the limits of what animate and inanimate nature can support on the planet.

The tendencies to seize outer nature and to occupy time and space have long been a theme of politicaleconomy. In his analysis of the working day and large-scale industry, Marx showed how factory-time replaces therhythms of the lifeworld and how the log quantity of time appropriated by capital is pushed to the physical limits ofhuman nature. Earlier still, in The Condition of the Working Class in Eng1and, Engels had shown how the subjugationof life relations to the capitalist production process forces outer human nature into line. Thompson describes the historyof the working class in England as, among other things, a permanent struggle against the subjection of traditional timerhythms to the discipline of capitalism. Seasonal time and the time of the day, individual demands for time andcollective allocations of time (such as festivals) increasingly lose their significance in structuring the rhythm of life andwork. For 'time is money', and the time appropriated by capital presses against all the physical limits of human nature,tending to engulf all twenty-four hours of the 365 days of the year. Recent debates in Germany about a shortening ofworktime display very clearly the virulence of this tendency to dissociate machine time from individual labour time, andthus ultimately to free capitalism from the limits of a temporal regime which takes human needs into account.

The principle of the shortening of production time asserts itself in technological rationalization, methods ofincreasing labour intensity, the artificial quickening of product incubation, the accelerated catalysation of chemicalreactions, and so on. Circulation time, for its part, is shortened through the creation of global systems of transport andcommunications, the development of the credit system and the spread of advertising. All these methods and tendencies

are designed to overcome the natural constraints on capitalist production. Innovations thus take place 'so fast thatnatural systems have no chance to build up cycles and networks', to absorb shocks and to stabilize the development ofthe ecosystem. The declining relevance of space and time is disastrous for the evolution of natural systems.

Technological advances in transport largely involve the ignoring of natural reliefs that might obstruct thedesired acceleration. Agglomeration effects are used to minimize transaction costs and to eliminate others that areproduced by the overcoming of distance. The resulting urbanization brings with it the contradiction between town andcountry, metropolis and periphery, domination and dependence. In this regard Marx noted that the

ever-growing preponderance... of the urban population ... disturbs the metabolic interaction between man andthe Earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of foodand clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil.

That urbanization disturbs the natural cycle of materials is shown clearly enough by municipal refuse dumps. But

ecologically significant value relations are also established between town and country or between metropolis andperiphery on the world market: dependencies based on value, capital and money (in the debt crisis, for example) involvecorresponding transfers of resources and one-sided flows of energy and materials. Dependence in the area of economicsthus interrupts ecological sequences and generates entropy increase that is higher than it would otherwise have been.

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The consequences of the reduced practical significance of space and time are spatial polarization and temporalpiracy. As space is trimmed to accelerate circulation and production, it becomes more difficult or even impossible to useit to satisfy other human needs for example, recuperation from the strains of work. Space and time are thus 'scarce'resources for which 'use competition' takes place. Since the need for recuperative leisure cannot be entirely excluded butonly modified in form, its satisfaction must: be relocated in space or delayed in time with the payment of monetarycompensation. Management of this initially traumatic polarization becomes the object of a new tourist industry, whichensures that people affected by this trimming of space and time for the purposes of capital valorization can betransported to specially prepared areas of recuperation. Temporal piracy expresses itself as an antithesis between workand leisure time, in which the latter is governed by the accelerated temporal regime of the production process: the bestconsumer is the fastest consumer. These spatial and temporal phenomena are both elements in the 'estrangement' ofmen and women from nature.

Spatial polarization and temporal piracy are the causes of social and political conflicts, even when these areoverlaid by surface tensions which appear to have nothing to do with time or space. Capitalist societies, driven by themoney form and the valorization of capital, not only provoke conflicts but also make available the form in which theyare handled: that is, the monetization of the ecological degradation of inner and outer human nature. Economicquantitivism, which stands in contradiction to qualitative ecological processes, thus offers money not only as a way ofsolving economic and ecological problems but also as the medium of their ongoing management. The dual character ofsocial processes, described at the beginning of this chapter, proves to be a resource for the management of conflict:ecologically damaging factors produced on the materials side are initially absorbed on the value side by the generalform of value, money.

Money is produced in the commodity-exchange process as the typical social form of mediation. Its functionsalso suit it to handle complex problems, to operate as 'procurer of social intercourse' and compensator of social damage.Money is the social prerequisite for the internalization of external effects. Damage to health caused in the labour

process is compensated by danger-money, air pollution by a 'dirty conditions bonus', water contamination by a tax oneffluents. And conversely, residences with good air and an unharmed landscape attract a higher rent than those inpolluted districts. The basket of goods entering into the price of labourpower in highly developed industrializedcountries includes an annual holiday trip. Money thus pays off the expropriated time, while global space is convertedinto a bundle of commodities whose elements can be used for 'holiday time'.

The category of money enables the various phenomena of ecological degradation (i.e. of entropy increase) to bereduced to a common quality and thereby made accessible for rational economic calculation. Water pollution ismeasured in terms of money, just like the loss of species diversity or the costs of holiday travel. Money is here themeans of both compensating for and rationalizing ecological degradation. The limits to such rationality have beenshown at the beginning of this chapter. Monetization presupposes, first, that enough money as means of purchase isavailable to compensate for the lost time and space, and, second, that compensatory offers of space and time are alsomade. Money is ultimately the medium of market-exchange relations and therefore requires both supply and demand.Money is needed, however, not only to purchase effective compensation but also to carry out expensive repairs to thedegraded environment insofar as there is a readiness to pay for such measures. Thus, after nature has been soextensively degraded through economic expansionism that the 'enjoyment of life' is reduced and human existence itselfthreatened in many regions, the expansionist drive turns to reconstruct the environment itself as an artefact. This maybe interpreted as a specific result of the modern economic system. With the he1p of the money medium, ecologicalconsequences of production and consumption can be introduced into the system of values in such a way that they arehandled through expenditure on the 'defensive costs of growth'. Here again, the natural environment is not simplyregarded as a store of resources or a refuse container, but rather as the produced product of the production process,insofar as the social collective is ready and willing to pay for reconstruction of the environment in the collectiveinterest. The rebuilding of the environment may thus become a field of capital accumulation.

Ecological capitalism' would seem, then, to be both imaginable and feasible as a society which continuallyrecreates its own 'natural' foundations as a consumption good. Yet this does not cancel the basic fact that even therestorative recreation of a natural human environment ('humanized nature') implies an increase in entropy. For entropydischarge through repair of ecological damage is necessarily bound up with entropy intake at other points of theenvironment: no more than the recyc1ing of waste is it capable of offering a radical solution to the problem. If industrial

waste or degraded nature is converted into use-values for the satisfaction of human needs, this can be done only throughfresh expenditure of energy and materials. The repairs thus become a constitutive part of the problem. There remainsonly one answer: namely, from the outset to organize the transformation of energy and materials in such a way that theunavoidable entropy increase is kept as low as possible; to build into the functioning of the economic system a series ofimperatives which prevent ecological damage.

11. An Ecological Marxism?

James OConnor has also recently addressed himself to this problem. By formulating a dialectic of relations ofproduction, productive forces and conditions of Production, he seeks to outline the essentials of 'an ecological Marxism'-broader than 'traditional Marxism- which will theoretically serve new social movements. His argument is that twotypes of crisis tendency are to be distinguished within the capitalist mode of production. First, crises emerge throughintensification of the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production: this is the object of

'traditional Marxist' analyses. Second, the contradictions between forces, relations and conditions of production bringforth crisis phenomena which are becoming the object of analysis within an ecological Marxism' that is still in its earlystages of development.

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Now, relations of production and productive forces, like social formation or economic system, are certainly familiarcategories within the Marxist theoretical tradition. A lot could be said on the subject, especially concerning the statusand interdependence of the categories. But we may start by assuming that if the categories are to have any sense, theycannot be hierarchically structured according to the schema of base and superstructure. The productive forces do notdetermine the relations of production in a unilinear manner; the latter are not inscribed within the productive forces -forexample, the dominant technology - of a society. The real substrata of the categories 'articulate themselves', and thismust be taken into account by the categories that form the theoretical system. The same is true of the categoryconditions of production, which is located at another level as 'productive forces' and 'relations of production'. In theGrundrisse Marx describes the 'general conditions of social production' as what we might today call state infrastructuralactivity serving production by particular capitals. General conditions of production react upon the requirementsof a social reproduction process -essentially for materials and energy - whose dynamic and structure are dominated bythe valorization strategies of particular capitals. Bridges, roads, general education, public safety, and so on, are indeedindispensable for social reproduction, for communication between social individuals. As a rule, however, their provisionis not profitable for particular capitals and must therefore be assured by the state in the form of 'public goods'.

O Connor analyses further the conditions of production. First: there were the

external physical conditions or the natural elements entering into constant and variable capital. Second, the'labourpower' of workers was defined as the 'personal conditions of production'. Third, Marx referred to 'thecommunal, general conditions of social production', e.g., 'means of communication'.

According to O'Connor, the fact that the general conditions of production are not produced in a capitalist way has afateful consequence: namely, that (private) capital treats them as if they did not have to be produced at all, as if theywere available without restriction. In other words, the elements of the conditions of production are lacking in economic

scarcity, so that there is no effective signal which might 'rationally' control their utilization. The stocks necessary for theproduction of flows do not enter the consciousness of economic agents, who do not have to concern themselves withthem. Thus production conditions are not subordinated to the institution (the market) in which the allocation of scarcegoods takes place. Market theorists conclude from this that 'general conditions of production' should as far as possiblebe handed over to private ownership, so that the market mechanism can evaluate results and their use can be regulatedby relative scarcities. For O'Connor, however, following Galbraith's well-known analysis of the contradiction betweenprivate affluence and public poverty, it is because general conditions of production are not adequately provided byprivate means that the state steps in between capital and its; conditions of production. The result is that these becomepoliticized from the very outset. Their form is dependent upon social relations of power, which can in turn be influencedby social movements. Only if political power is asserted in the political field can influence be brought to bear upon theprovision of general conditions of production. The economic mechanism of allocation breaks down at this point.

For O'Connor, then, capital now has the tendency to undermine its own conditions of production by bringingabout their 'underproduction'. In these ways, we can safely introduce "scarcity" into the theory of economic crisis in aMarxist, not neo-Malthusian, way. We can also introduce the possibility of capital underproduction once we add up therising costs of reproducing the conditions of production. In addition to the overproduction crisis, which in O'Connor'sview has been analyzed by traditional Marxism, there is thus also an 'underproduction crisis' which must become theobject of ecological Marxism.

In this context, however, the concept of underproduction is rather unfortunate. First, it implies what O'Connorhimself rejects: namely, the reproducibility of the natural conditions of production (for only if they can be produced istheir underproduction possible), and thus the circularity and reversibility of processes which are by nature irreversible.As we have already seen, the assumption of reproducibility and reversibility makes it impossible to develop the conceptof scarcity, which arises precisely because transformations of energy and materials cannot be reversed. The concept ofunderproduction only makes sense as a synonym for shortage rather than scarcity. Second, underproduction inO'Connor's sense is nothing but a synonym for ecological degradation and resulting social problems, as his ownexamples make quite plain.

Examples include the health bill necessitated by capitalist work and family relations; the drug and drug

rehabilitation bill; the vast sums expended as a result of the deterioration of the social environment (e.g. policeand divorce bill); the enormous revenues expended to prevent further environmental destruction and clean-upor repair the legacy of ecological destruction from the past; monies required to invent and develop, andproduce synthetics and natural substitutes as means and objects of production and consumption; the hugesums required to pay off oil sheiks and energy companies, e.g. ground rent, monopoly profit, etc.; the garbagedisposal bill; the extra costs of congested urban space; the costs falling on governments and peasants andworkers in the Third World as a result of the twin crises of ecology and development. And so on.

The list is not systematic: it partly refers to cases of degradation of the natural environment, but partly also to the'defensive costs' of growth which must beincurred to repair or prevent undesired consequences of the ecological crisis.These costs are quite considerable: Leipert estimated them at ten per cent of the national product in 1985 for the thenFederal Republic of Germany. As defensive costs, however, ecological damage is transferred to and handled within thesystem of values and market rationality - with all the limitations we have discussed above. Ecological degradation may

be the reverse side of an increase in economic value (costs of growth) and may even stimulate a further increase if repairmeasures, which enter into the national product, are subsequently carried out. Paradoxically, therefore, it is conceivablethat O'Connor's ecological underproduction crisis might he1p to overcome an economic overproduction crisis. But thetwo cannot he treated as the objects of alternative analysis within a 'traditional or ecological Marxism.

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It may be that 'ecological underproduction' should be interpreted as a strategy for the avoidance of 'economicoverproduction' (and overaccumulation). Within a non-Marxist theoretical framework, an attempt is made to accountfor this by means of the categories of 'external diseconomies' or 'social costs of private enterprise' (Kapp): privateeconomic profitability could be raised if the costs of preventing ecological damage were avoided. And the category of'defensive costs' itself suggests that 'social costs' and 'external diseconomies' have at least partially a monetaryequivalent, so that ecological degradation reacts, albeit with some delay, upon the system of values. The unloading ontosociety of environmental costs that would otherwise increase the outlay of constant or variable capital has acounteracting effect upon 'the tendency of the falling rate of profit'. Rohwer, Knzel and Ipsen go so far as to identifythe rising costs of constant and variable capital - due to the later internalization of environmental damage - as the onlyplausible and consistent explanation for the falling rate of profit. 'Underproduction', in the sense of spatial and temporalexternalization, would for a certain period help to prevent 'overproduction' in the sense of overaccumulation of capital.

Underproduction may thus be a strategy for the avoidance of overproduction. It follows from the logic ofmarket decision, reacting upon the system of values when a growing outlay on constant and variable capital (without acompensating rise in the rate of surplus-value) is leading to a fall in the rate of profit and tending to produce the crisisof overproduction to which O'Connor refers. The defensive costs of growth may rise to such an extent that: they exceedthe amount by which the national product is increased - in which case growth becomes an economically irrationalproposition. The time dimension is thus decisive: economic and ecological time are different, but they are notindependent of each other. Consequently, ecological underproduction and economic overproduction should not beassigned to separate analytic discourses.

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