Kohei Saito - Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

From the late 1990s onward the ecological core to Karl Marx's work has been drawn out by writers and thinkers such as John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm and Ian Angus together with many others. Kohei Saito's book Karl Marx's Ecosocialism was a further development of this which closely analysed Marx's unpublished manuscripts to explore in detail how he understood the interaction between human society and the wider world. Marx's ecological work is often summarised by the concept of "metabolic rift" - that capitalism creates a break in ecological systems as a result of how production is organised. It is a theoretical tool that has been used increasingly to understand the extent of the multiple environmental crises that humanity faces. But Marx's work was always a tool for human liberation - a guide to action - that can be used to develop strategies for confronting capitalism as part of a struggle for socialism. It is in this arena that Kohei Saito's latest book contributes its greatest theoretical insights.

In the introduction Saito argues that "Marxism now has a chance of revival if it can contribute to enriching debates and social movements by providing not only a thorough critique of the capitalist mode of production but also a concrete vision of post-capitalist society."

The book is structured into two halves. The first is a explanation and defence of ecological Marxism. Here there is some overlap with Saito's earlier work, and with that of other writers like Foster. But as he did with his earlier book Saito brings a close knowledge of Marx's unpublished writings into his discussion. While defending the Marxist ecology from its critics and exploring Marx's dialectical understanding of the nature-society metabolism, Saito also seeks to understand why Marx's ecological work remained neglected or ignored for so long.

Saito argues that the answer to this conundrum lies in two related issues. The first is the "unfinished character of [Marx's] critique of political economy" and secondly that Engels, who edited and presented Marx's posthumous work (particularly the second and third volume of Capital) lacked clarity on Marx's ideas which meant he in turn downplayed and neglected key insights from his friend and comrade. Saito says that Engels "marginalised" Marx's ecological critique.

Here Saito draws on his deep knowledge of the new Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) the project that has been publishing all of Marx's manuscripts to illustrate this. He shows how, in the last years of his life, Marx was engaged in a deep study of scientific and anthropological texts which show him grappling with how non-capitalist societies had different relationships to the natural world. In addition Marx was exploring scientific texts that further developed his own ecological understanding. Engels, he argues, neglected and "simplified" this aspect of Marx's work. According to Saito:

Despite Engels's interest in ecological issues under capitalist production, it is undeniably characterised by a philosophical and transhistorical scheme, as a result of which he ended up rejecting Liebig's concept of metabolism and remained satisfied with the 'antithesis of town and country' conceptualised in the 1840s. Furthermore, in Engels's discussion of the real of freedom as well as of pre-capitalist societies, he held a more unilateral vision of historical development based on progressive recognition of natural laws with an aid of modern natural science.

While Saito marshals some interesting arguments I felt the evidence did not completely back up this claim. Importantly I felt that with his focus on the texts, Saito neglects to develop the context of the socialist movement itself. This fundamentally shaped how Marx's ideas were used and developed - something that should not be laid at the feet of Engels. In particular Saito doesn't discuss in detail how Second International socialism, because it was essentially reformist, emphasised the promethean and gradualist aspects to Marx's thought. This is the crux of the debate within the German Social Democratic Party which Rosa Luxembourg engaged in against Bernstein. Yet this key moment in the development of Marxist theory is absent from Saito's study.

In addition, but related to this, the importance of the Soviet Union in developing "Marxism" in the 20th century cannot be under estimated. In particular the fact that the USSR wore the mantel of socialism, while maintaining an economy based on accumulation, meant that they too wanted to downplay aspects of Marx's thinking that would criticise an economic system based on endless expansion. 

Degrowth Marxism

The second half of Saito's book develops these arguments to explain Marx as a "degrowth Communist". Here Saito shows how Marx's early ideas developed and changed through his lifetime. As Saito argues this is important in part because it is the response to critics of Marx that say he was eurocentric or argued that history was inevitably progressive. Saito shows, as have other scholars such as Kevin B Anderson, that Marx's ideas on anti-colonialism, national liberation and revolution outside of Western Europe and North America developed greatly. In particular Saito argues that Marx broke from his early understanding of historical development which essentially saw the world following a similar path to capitalist development in Western Europe. As Saito says:

Marx underwent a significant theoretical shift after he brought his attention to bear on the problem of 'productive forces of capital' in his analysis of the 'real subsumption' in the Economic Manuscripts of 1861-1863. This shift made him thoroughly rethink his previous assumption about the progressive character of capitalism. He realised that productive forces do not automatically prepare the material foundation for new post-capitalist society but rather exacerbate the robbery of nature. However, due to the neglect of the concept of 'productive forces of capital';, there remains a common misunderstanding that Marx continued to naively presume a 'progressive view of history' comparable to a natural law.

Crucially, Saito argues, Marx's ideas about the crucial question of "communism" itself changed. It is "not that the paths to communism became plural but that Marx's idea of communism itself significantly changed in the 1880s as a result of his conscious reflection upon earlier theoretical flaws and the one-sidedness of historical materialism". Again Saito draws the readers attention to Marx's close scrutiny of works that explored "natural science and pre-capitalist societies" which "deepen[ed] his theory of metabolism. In this period, Marx increasingly 

attempted to comprehend the different ways of organising metabolism between humans and nature in non-Western and pre-capitalist rural communes as the source of their vitality. From the perspective of Marx's theory of metabolism, it is not sufficient to deal with his research in non-Western and pre-capitalist societies in terms of communal property, agriculture and labour... In other words, what is at stage in his research on non-Western societies is not merely the dissolution of communal property though colonial rule. it has ecological implications. In fact, with his growing interest in ecology, Marx came to see the plunder of the natural environment as a manifestation of the central contradiction of capitalism. 

What Marx gets from these studies is the possibility of "radically different ways of social organisation of metabolic interaction between humans and nature". This means that rather than the "development of the productive forces of capital as being essential to Communism, the rational management of the societies' metabolism is what matters. This leads to Saito's emphasis of Marx as a degrowth communist, because it is the growth of the productive forces that undermines the very viability of society and any sustainable world has to be based on a completely different vision.

I don't have any particular disagreement with this assessment. Saito explains it well. But again it feels to me that his textual analysis means he misses key insights. Saito writes that it was in the 1880s when Marx's vision of communism fundamentally changed. But this immediately follows one of the key moments in Marx's revolutionary activism - his work supporting the Paris Commune and analysing the event itself.

Saito points to the defeat of the Commune and says it meant the "weakening of revolutionary hope" for Western societies. But the Paris Commune did not just give Marx "hope", it gave him the first clear example of how a democratic socialist state could work. This is why it's disappointing that Marx's brilliant work The Civil War in France is not discussed in detail in Saito's book. It is in this work that Marx explores how a revolutionary Commune arises out of working class struggle, smashing the capitalist state, and creating an entirely new society. In this society, the Commune was to be "the political form of even the smallest country hamlet". Such a vision of insurgent democratic communism from below, based on a completely different organisation of the productive forces, is surely crucial to understanding Marx's vision for a sustainable communism. It is no surprise this work became central to Lenin's own vision of the sort of revolutionary praxis needed for workers' to create their own state based on mass democratic participation.

This criticism aside, I would, argue that Saito's book is a crucial read for socialists trying to understand the process that Marx went through in developing his ecological ideas. Indeed, the final section on "abundance" is an extremely important response to those who argue that Marxism has little to say about a future society. For instance, Saito writes:

Marx envisioned a society in which natural and social differences of abilities and talents among individuals do not appear as social and economic inequality but as individual uniqueness because they can be compensated and supplemented by each other... In this sense, communism does not impose conformity and uniformity upon everyone for the sake of equality, but it is about social organisation and institutionalisation that aims to demolish the capitalist tie between differences in ability and skill and economic inequality.

I was particularly taken by Saito's emphasis, which arises from his focus on the "productive forces", that "abundance" is not about the amount of technology, but is rather a "about sharing and cooperating by distributing both wealth and burdens more equality and justly among members of the society". Saito critiques "left accelerationists" whose vision of a post-capitalist society is "full automation" to provide luxury for all. But they ignore the planetary boundaries that will limit this. Instead, Saito reminds us of the inherently democratic vision of mutual cooperation at the heart of Marx's communism. This, he emphasises, arises directly out of Marx's ecology which is why this is such an important work.

Related Reviews

Saito - Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature & the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy
Foster - Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution
Foster & Burkett - Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique
Marx - The Civil War in France