Content uploaded by Anitra Nelson
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Anitra Nelson on Jul 19, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
New Materialism is Green Materialism
Anitra Nelson
Paper presented at
Historical Materialism Australasia 2015:
Reading Capital, Class & Gender Today
University of Sydney, NSW, Australia 17–18 July
Green Agenda Panel, 9.30 am 17 July
Chair, Hall Greenland, and other speakers Ariel Salleh and Terry Leahy
Abstract
We are becoming acutely conscious that the natural environment, which has
succumbed in various ways to our appropriation, now has the capacity to
reappropriate us. Marxʼs ʻnew materialismʼ, a ʻgreen materialismʼ, is essential to a
neo-socialist, ecosocialist, vision and strategies of anti-capitalist movements today.
Contra climate change sceptics, and liberal market fundamentalists who argue that
ʻthere is no alternativeʼ, Marxʼs materialism is a form of philosophical realism
acknowledging a world ʻout thereʼ beyond individual or collective thought control. The
ʻnew materialismʼ — contrasted to the ʻold materialismʼ in Thesis 10 in Marxʼs Theses
on Feuerbach (1845) — was sensuous, practical, real, critical and revolutionary.
Marxʼs approach integrated two lenses in a pair of materialist spectacles. To create
three-dimensional reality, one lens focused on our natural and, by extension, artificial
environments, the other on our social realities. So a green materialist perspective
points to the strategic need to address two challenges simultaneously: on the one
hand the ecological and, by extension, artificially built environment and, on the other
hand, our social organisation — so we can fulfil the basic needs of everyone while
taking into account the regenerative limits and ecological needs of Earth.
Bio
Activist-scholar Anitra Nelson — Associate Professor in the Centre for Urban
Research at RMIT University (Melbourne) — currently works on an Australian
Environmental Justice project (an RMIT–Friends of the Earth, Australia, partnership).
She co-edited the non-market socialist Life Without Money: Building Fair and
Sustainable Economies (2011, Pluto Press — http://www.lifewithoutmoney.info/) and
her Marxʼs Concept of Money: The God of Commodities (1999, Routledge) was
reissued in paperback in 2014.
Contact: Anitra.nelson@rmit.edu.au
Nelson, Anitra ʻNew materialism is Green materialismʼ HMA July 2015, Sydney
1
This paper outlines an ecosocialist concept of ʻgreen materialismʼ showing that anti-
capitalist movements today correspond to Marxʼs ʻnew materialismʼ as famously
elaborated in his eleven Theses on Feuerbach (1845).1 Furthermore, the defining
characteristics of anti-capitalist currents offer the bases for replacing the organising
principle of our society, money, by direct democracy.
Agency
While we have had the good fortune to be been born on planet Earth, we have had
the misfortune to be born at a point in history when our organisation as a species is
dominated by capitalist values, practices and relationships, the dynamics of which
are self-destructive.
Global warming is just the tip of the iceberg of broader environmental crises resulting
from capitalist activities. Even if we managed to reduce carbon emissions, capitalism
is eroding the soils, polluting the waters and air, and eliminating so many species that
the Earth is becoming uninhabitable for the very species that has caused its demise.
We might well ask, ʻWhat is to be done?ʼ What is on the agenda?
Marxʼs work very self-consciously and conscientiously approached the world as full of
potential for a future that breaks with the present, not just the past. His views were
based on a philosophy of revolutionary being and practice, a concept of us as active
agents.
It is with such agency that growing numbers of activists have become conscious of —
and dedicated to — practices aligned to visions of a new environmentally based
socialism, referred to as ʻecosocialismʼ. Michael Löwy (2014: xi) writes:
Ecosocialism is a radical proposition — i.e. one that deals with the roots of the
ecological crisis — which distinguishes itself from the productivist varieties of
socialism in the twentieth century (either social democracy or the Stalinist brand of
“communism”) as well as from the ecological currents that accommodate
themselves in one way or another to the capitalist system.
Ecosocialists redefine our conjuncture and potential, breaking with conventional
parliamentary democratic styles and adopting a full and holistic field of action against
the state and against markets. We fulfil Marxʼs direction in Thesis 10 of his Theses
on Feuerbach: ʻThe standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of
the new is human society or social humanity.ʼ That is, replacing individualistic,
bourgeois society with a collective and creative sense of humanity.
1 As distinct, of course, from mainstream associations of materialism to consumerism and any
association of my definition of ʻgreen materialismʼ with the ever-increasing production and
consumption of purportedly earth-friendly goods and services. I read ʻmaterialismʼ here in the Marxist
way it appears as the title of this conference — ʻhistorical materialismʼ.
Nelson, Anitra ʻNew materialism is Green materialismʼ HMA July 2015, Sydney
2
Anti-capitalism
Evolving in the mid-1990s, typified by the Mexican Zapatista, anti-globalisation and
Occupy movements — as well as ecosocialism — ʻanti-capitalismʼ is often
characterised as a break with the traditional Left rather than a flowering of Marxism.
The narrow interpretation of the traditional Left reads Marxism as workerist,
organising in parties and communist states.
Yet precursors to the twentieth century Mexican, Russian, Spanish and Cuban
socialist uprisings included anarchist, syndicalist, peasant and national liberationists.
Similarly, the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s was characterised by environmental,
peace, womenʼs liberationist and autonomist strains. All these currents argued with
and against narrow revolutionary organisation and intent. Today global resistance,
radical ecology and left variants of identity politics continue and develop that heritage.
Argentinian Ezequiel Adamovsky (2011[2008]: 89–124) distinguishes current anti-
capitalism from the traditional Left because of its focus on ten ways of operating:
1. Anti-power, counter-power (ʻ“disempowering” the stateʼ rather than ʻ“taking
over” itʼ)
2. Autonomously (ʻthe expansion of power-to undermines power-overʼ)
3. With presence (ʻEach time they create self-managed, non-commercial, and
egalitarian spaces, the revolution is taking place.ʼ)
4. Using horizontalist structures — non-hierarchical assembly-based
organisation sharing knowledge and skills
5. In de-centred ways — constantly re-negotiated voluntary and flexible
networks
6. Integrating a multitude of types of people and liberationist causes
7. Strategically, responding to specifics — learning through listening rather
than laying down a general program and propagating a line
8. In local–global —vs national state-focused — struggles against capitalism
9. Using direct action and civil disobedience — being the point/power
10. Developing a constructive creative culture vs an intransigent them–us
culture.
Taking a big-picture view of these ten descriptors, three points stand out. First, anti-
capitalist movements have a characteristic unity of purpose and organisation.
Second, their common characteristics are incredibly ecological in both manifestation
and cohesion; they reflect an ecologistʼs holistic perception of the way the natural
world functions as interlocking, antagonistic yet balancing aspects, self-sufficient and
dynamic. Third, this evolution of Left activism is remarkably close to Marxʼs radical
view of what it really means to be human.
Therefore, in resisting capitalism, it is useful to refer to Marxʼs logic not just his
profound economic analysis. Marxʼs methods can be easily and usefully applied to
our current political, economic and environmental conjuncture — a conjuncture in
which a critical climb in carbon emissions is leading to potentially cataclysmic climate
Nelson, Anitra ʻNew materialism is Green materialismʼ HMA July 2015, Sydney
3
change. His philosophy is appropriate and significant still — arguably even more so
— today.
The ʻnewʼ materialism
Marxʼs philosophy developed contra civil society perspectives that markets and the
state are the natural way of things and the way things ought to be. Marxʼs ʻnew
materialismʼ envisioned scientists and activists who saw the world without capitalist
blinkers or religious distortions, humbly responsible for their collective being,
continuously re-aligning thinking with changes in their political (i.e. economic) and
environmental realities.
Today Marxʼs new materialists — anti-capitalists — are what I refer to as ʻgreen
materialistsʼ, all recognising a world out there, a world that we only partly understand,
that we are always in the process of trying to understand better so that we can
improve it. My reason for applying this green materialist framework is to show
continuity between the socialists of the nineteenth century and twenty-first century
movements.
Marxʼs materialism is a form of ʻphilosophical realismʼ acknowledging a world ʻout
thereʼ beyond individual or collective thought control, a belief in ʻthe existence of
something other than the mind and its contentsʼ (Ruben 1977: 4–5). That is, we
sense a world of which we are a part, a world of things both separate from us and
associated with us in various ways.
Marx developed this radical, revolutionary materialist view of the world and our role in
it as a reaction to strongly prevailing conservative views that tended to rationalise
traditional, religious and capitalist ways of being and operating. Contemporary
examples of anti-materialism are climate change deniers who argue that there is no
observable evidence of global warming and liberal market fundamentalists who argue
that ʻthere is no alternativeʼ (TINA).
The source for these ʻphenomenalistʼ views is the mind and ideals — as if we are all-
seeing, all-controlling masters of the universe who can simply decide that the world
will take on a particular form, and it will. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is a
good example of an idealist.2 Capitalism reinforces idealism because money allows
people to invest in wondrous visions realised, in fact, by workers whose creations are
taken from them — for money. Investors see the world as a blank sheet. All they
need to do is to throw out some money and voilá — they are gods creating the world,
as we know it. The nonsensical views of climate change deniers and pro-capitalism
parallel characteristics of the idealistic ʻold materialismʼ that Marx challenged.
2 Arguing contra idealist interpretations, Russian Marxist Nikolai Bukharin (1969: 54) wrote that it was
clear as day that mind was ʻthe offspringʼ of matter:
A zero cannot think; nor can a doughnut — or the hole in it — think; nor can “mind” think without
matter…
Matter existed before the appearance of a thinking human.
Nelson, Anitra ʻNew materialism is Green materialismʼ HMA July 2015, Sydney
4
Marxʼs ʻnew materialismʼ was sensuous, practical, real, critical and revolutionary.
Furthermore, John Bellamy Foster (2000: 1) argues, ʻthe development of both
materialism and science promoted — indeed made possible — ecological ways of
thinkingʼ. Ecology focuses on the interrelations between organisms and their
environments, between us and all other beings and matter on Earth. Marx insisted in
his writings and politicking that labour and nature produced wealth, using a metabolic
perspective of economic activity (Ibid, 168). Indeed Russian Marxist Bukharin (1969:
104) would write pithily that:
Nothing could be more incorrect than to regard nature from the teleological point of
view: man, the lord of creation, with nature created for his use, and all things
adapted to human needs. As a matter of fact, nature often falls upon the “lord of
creation” in such as savage manner that he is obliged to admit here superiority. It
has taken man centuries of bitter struggle to place his iron bit in natureʼs mouth.
A ʻgreenʼ materialism
Just as Marx saw a distinctive and nurturing world ʻout thereʼ, he was especially
curious as to the particular way that the capitalist economy worked beyond our
control, as if behind our backs. In other words, there was not simply a physical, but
also a social, behavioural ʻotherʼ or politico-economic reality.
This effect was particularly heightened once we instituted money as the organising
principle of our society, creating a world of use value and exchange value, joined and
opposing like the two sides of the one coin. This is why Marx referred to money as
the ʻformʼ of capital, while the content of capital was the key dynamic between worker
and capitalist. Note that Marx uses ʻformʼ here in an intrinsic way. We cannot
extricate this monetary form from its capitalist relation any more than we can talk
about a self beyond our bodies — only an idealist would do that.
Foster (op.cit.) points out: ʻit was the contradiction between use value and exchange
value engendered by capitalism that Marx considered to be one of the foremost
contradictions of the entire dialectic of capitalʼ. By placing monetary values on nature
as property, on effort as work and things as commodities, we reframed the world and
reprioritised its contents. Capitalism forces us to subjugate social and environmental
values (use values) to abstract, magical — even godly — monetary values.
Socio-economic inequality is intricately bound to the monetary dynamic of more and
less. Similarly, the values necessary to account for ecological sustainability are
eliminated, dominated or mangled in a world where monetary values, prices and
profits, rule. Thus, today, we have to address two crises of ʻthe money-systemʼ or ʻthe
money powerʼ that we call capitalism. The first crisis requires us to fulfil everyoneʼs
basic needs rather than continue living in an unequal world of overconsumption and
starvation. Indeed, the second crisis demands us to take account of the regenerative
limits and ecological needs of the Earth.
Nelson, Anitra ʻNew materialism is Green materialismʼ HMA July 2015, Sydney
5
Marxʼs analysis of capitalism was not just accurate but also profound. It was a deep
analysis based on a philosophical appreciation of the risks to humanity of being
falsely alienated from nature and being forced to work for money and capitalists.
Instead, Marx argued, we could collectively engage directly with nature, as in
organising as commoners producing and exchanging for collective sufficiency —
ditching the organising principle and power of money on which capitalism is formed
(Nelson & Timmerman 2011).
A Green Agenda
Imagine a global network of collectively sufficient, cell-like communities each
responsible for the sustainability of the environments they live off. Each diverse
community empowered, relatively autonomous, present, organised horizontally
internally, networked in seamless ways locally and globally, caring for the Earth.
Collectively satisfying everyoneʼs basic needs, we would be fulfilling our real human
potential as creative active beings.
In short, the defining characteristics of anti-capitalist currents offer the democratic
and materialist bases for replacing money as the organising principle of society. The
Green agenda is in front of us — this is what needs to be built on — what needs to
be done.
References
Adamovsky, Ezequiel (2011) Anit-Capitalism: The New Generation of Emancipatory
Movements. [First published in 2008 by Era Naciente SRL, Buenos Aires.] Seven
Stories Press, New York.
Bukharin, Nikolai (1969) Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. University of
Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
Foster, John Bellamy (2000) Marxʼs Ecology: Materialism and Nature. Monthly
Review, NYC.
Löwy, Michael (2014) Ecosocialism. Haymarket Books, NYC.
Marx, Karl (2002 [1845]) Theses on Feuerbach. [First written 1945, first published in
German and Russian in 1928 — in the Marx-Engels Archives Book I, Institute of
Marxism-Leninism, Moscow — and in English in 1938 in The German Ideology
Lawrence and Wishart, London.] Here translated by Cyril Smith, accessed 15 June
2015 — https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/
Nelson A and Timmerman F (2011) (Eds) Life Without Money: Building Fair and
Sustainable Economies. Pluto Press, London.
Ruben, David-Hillel (1977) Marxism and Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of
Knowledge. The Harvester Press/Humanities Press, Brighton/ New Jersey.
