Ecological Degradation and the Evolution of
World-Systems
by
Christopher Chase-Dunn
Institute for Research on World-Systems
University of California-Riverside
chriscd@ucr.edu
and
Thomas D. Hall
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
DePauw University
Greencastle, IN 46135-0037 USA
thall@depauw.edu
v. 8-24-04
(8131 words)
A revised version is in Andrew K. Jorgenson and Edward L. Kick (eds.)
Globalization and the Environment. Brill, 2006
In this chapter
we summarize and build upon our work in comparative world-systems analysis
(Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, 2000, 2002) to explore the roles played by
anthropogenic ecological degradation in the evolution of world-systems over the
past one hundred thousand years. Our analysis builds on work by anthropologists
on population pressure and ecological degradation. Among other things, we find
that the expanding spatial scale of sedentary world-systems corresponds to the
expanding scale of ecological degradation.
Thus in the long run, more complex and hierarchical systems face the
same problems that smaller and simpler systems faced, despite the effects of
institutional developments that temporarily overcome the constraints of
demography and ecology. Processes of
ecological depletion have long been central in the evolution of social
structures and human institutions, and are likely to continue to be so in the
future.
We begin by
summarizing our general approach, highlighting the role of ecological
processes, especially environmental degradation, in systemic social evolution.
Many geo-scientists have focused on the problem of the extent to which changes
in climate, soil, and biosphere over the last two hundred years have been
caused by human action. A few social scientists have begun doing formal comparative
research on the causal connections between world-systemic developmental
processes and changes in the biosphere (e.g. Grimes and Roberts 1995; Kick et
al 1996, and the other chapters in this volume). It is helpful to place
such work in the context of the roles that ecological factors and anthropogenic
ecological degradation have played in the evolution of world-systems over the
past 100,000 years.
Because we wish to
study systemic transformations, we maximize the range of possible cases by
including both nomadic and sedentary human groups. In our earlier work (Hall
and Chase-Dunn 1997) we began with sedentism, but now we have realized that
that same principles that influenced the expansion of sedentary world-systems
were operating long before the first peoples began living in hamlets and
villages. Indeed it was the search for
new resources that motivated our species to migrate out of
We define
world-systems as intersocietal networks in which the interactions (e.g.,
trade, warfare, intermarriage, information) are important for the reproduction
of the internal structures of the composite units and importantly affect
changes that occur in these local structures (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997). Because the boundaries of non-state
social groups (e.g., "bands" or "tribes") are often
empirically fuzzy, and because the term "society" can too easily
imply a clearly bounded social group, we use the term "composite
units" in our definition.
World-systems
are fundamentally socially structured interaction networks that include
different cultural groups and polities within them. As social structures they
are based on biological and ecological substrata, but they are analytically
separate from, and different from, biological and ecological systems. The key
difference is due to culture -- the invention by humans of synthesized symbolic
systems of representation and communication.
We begin with an already-formed human institutional process based on
linguistically constructed social roles, relationships and normative structures
that had been developed by nomadic foragers since the emergence of oral
language. World-systems involve interactions among culturally different groups,
and this idea can usefully be applied to nomadic hunter-gatherers of the
Paleolithic age. Sedentary world-systems began when diviersified foragers (hunter-gatherers)
first began living most of the year in villages and they interacted with their
still-nomadic neighbors. With sedentism concepts of territoriality and control
of access to natural resources intensified.
This intensification was motivated by a desire to mitigate the effects
of over-exploitation of resources. Thus, concern with human-caused ecological
depletion coincides with the development of world-systems. The importance of
deforestation and other types of ecological depletion as factors in long-term
social change have long been recognized by social scientists (e.g. Chew 2000,
2001). What we add is an extension to
before the time of the invention of the emergence of states.
But what is a
world-system, and where are its boundaries?
A.
Spatial Boundaries: A Multicriteria Approach
Spatially bounding world-systems
necessarily must proceed from a specific locale. While all human societies, even nomadic
hunter-gatherers, interact with neighboring societies, not all intersocietal
interactions have had global consequences. Here we use “world” in
“world-system” in the way Wallerstein (1974a, 1974v) originally intended, as a
self-contained system, not necessarily
global (Earth-wide) in extent. We use
the notion of "fall-off" of effects over space to bound the networks
of interaction that importantly impinge upon any focal locale. The world-system
of which any locality is a part includes those peoples whose actions in
production, communication, warfare, alliance and trade have a large and
interactive impact on that locality.
Interactions must be two-way and regularized to be systemic.
One-shot deals do not a system make. From this perspective world-systems were
small regional affairs that gradually became larger as long-distance
transportation and communications technology developed.
Clearly, economic
forms of interaction are important in all world-systems. Of these, bulk-goods
exchanges that form an intersocietal division of labor are constitutive forms
of interconnection (Wallerstein 1974a, 1974b). However, we also agree with Jane
Schneider (1977) that luxury goods can be very important for the reproduction
of power structures. Prestige goods networks typically are much larger than
bulk goods networks. Clearly, too,
regularized political-military conflicts and/or alliances are important in all
systems. The political/military network
is typically intermediate in spatial size between the bulk and prestige goods
networks. Finally, we note that networks of information flows including such
intangibles as ideology, religion, technical information, and culture can be an
important from of systemic interaction. Thus, we propose four types of
interaction for spatially bounding
world-systems:
·
bulk goods
exchange network (BGN)
·
prestige
goods exchange network (PGN)
·
political/military
exchange network (PMN)
·
information
exchange network (IN)
Figure 1 gives a
graphic representation of typical nested relations among these networks. Occasionally, as in both the modern global
world-system and some earlier geographically isolated systems (e.g., the
Figure 1: Spatially Bounding
World-Systems with Interaction Networks
B.
Core/Periphery Relations
We divide potential core/periphery
relations into two aspectss: (1)
core/periphery differentiation
exists when two societies are in systemic interaction with one another and one
of these has higher population density and/or greater complexity than the
other; (2) core/periphery hierarchy,
exists when one society dominates or exploits another. While these two aspects
often go together, but there are important instances of reversal. We make this analytical distinction to
facilitate empirical investigations of actual intersocietal relations. We also
note that the question of core/periphery relations needs to be asked at each
level of network interaction.
Core/periphery
relations can be quite complex. Mitchell Allen (1996: Chapter 1) developed the
concept of a "contested periphery," a peripheral region for which two
non-contiguous core regions compete. He finds that once an area has been
incorporated into one world-system it can more easily be moved into another
world-system than if it were being incorporated for the first time. Not
surprisingly, contested peripheries have more leverage in responding to core
demands. Furthermore, what is peripheral in one world-system can become
semiperipheral in another. A semiperipheral region may be:
1.
one that
mixes both core and peripheral forms of organization;
2.
spatially
located between two or more competing core regions;
3.
mediate
activities between core and peripheral areas;
4.
one in which
institutional features are in some ways intermediate between those forms found
in core and peripheral regions.
5.
recently
founded societies that are located near the edge of an older core region.
All world-systems do no necessarily
have a semiperiphery, and some may have several different kinds. We leave the existence, number, and types of
intermediate levels as an empirical problem in need of further investigation.
C.
Semiperipheral Development
World-systems
have gotten larger in terms of population size, population density, territorial
extent, absolute and per capita productivity. Growth necessarily entails
absorption of formerly external areas, the incorporation of new peoples and
territories and/or the merger of formerly autonomous world-systems. Throughout
these processes no one core area remains a core area indefinitely. Development
is uneven. Old cores are replaced, often by formerly semiperipheral societies.
The
semiperiphery is fertile ground for social, organizational, and technical
innovation and has an advantageous location for the establishment of new
centers of power (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997, Ch. 5). In particular, secondary
state-formation on the marches of empires has frequently been recognized as a
semiperipheral phenomenon that is related to the rise and fall of empires and
the shift of hegemony within interstate systems (e.g. Mann 1986). A broadly
similar phenomenon occurs among chiefdoms (e.g. Kirch 1984:204).
City-states,
many of which engage in merchant capitalism and production capitalism, are one
special type of semiperipheral society.
They often mediated trade between the core and peripheral regions.
Sometimes they manipulated this position in order to maintain political and
economic autonomy, although they were often swallowed up by imperial expansion
(Frankenstein 1979). Some important examples are: e.g. Dilmun, Old Assur,
II.
World-Systems Evolution
We see
world-systemic evolution as open-ended and path dependent. That is, it occurs
within the context of specific historical legacies and conditions. Important
bifurcations and discontinuities of development, rapid transformations, and
instances of devolution are normal characteristics of social change (see
Sanderson 1990). A world-system is composed of the totality of interactions that constitute the social, economic,
cultural, and political system. Thus, world-systems analysis must attend to the
complex dialectics that link social change within composite units with the
entire system. Causality can run from the system to the parts, but also from
the parts to the system.
World-systemic evolution has three
major elements:
1. semiperipheral development;
2. an "iteration" model
that involves demographic and ecological variables as causes of hierarchy
formation, economic intensification and technological change; and
3. transformations of modes of
accumulation.
The main
long-term forces of world-systemic evolution are population growth, ecological
degradation, and population pressure. Population growth, other things
equal, causes the decline of natural resources -- ecological degradation because
more people use more natural resources. The type and scale of ecological
degradation varies with the nature of production technology and the scale of
the exploitation of natural resources. Population pressure results when
resource scarcities require people to increase the amount of effort necessary
to meet their needs, e.g. as a resource becomes depleted it take more labor to
produce the same amount of a needed product.
It is not necessary for resources to be completely destroyed to promote
change. Rather, it is only necessary
that more effort becomes necessary to obtain the same return. Yet, people
usually prefer to continue in the way that they know as long as the increase in
effort is not too great, what George Zipf (1949) called the principle of
least effort.
More production
leads to greater environmental degradation. This occurs because more resources
are extracted, and because of the polluting consequences of production and
consumption activities. Nomadic hunter-gatherers depleted the herds of big game
and Polynesian horticulturalists deforested many a Pacific island.
Environmental degradation is not a new phenomenon. Only its global scale is
new.
Figure 2: Basic Iteration Model of World-System Evolution
When increased
effort fails or becomes too costly in terms of labor time or other
expenditures, emigration can be an attractive alternative. Sometimes, however, suitable new locations
are not available, either due to a lack of desireable new sites or because of
effective resistance from existing occupants of desirable sites. In such cases
of social and/or environmental circumscription (Carneiro 1970) people cannot easily migrate to solve these problems and
so competition for resources within and between societies
increases. This usually leads to
increased conflict. Sometimes endemic warfare functions as a demographic
regulator by reducing the population density and alleviating (temporarily)
population pressure. But in other cases new hierarchies and/or larger polities
emerge (hierarchy formation) to regulate the use of resources (e.g.
property, law), and/or the invention and implementation of new technologies of
production (e.g. horticulture, irrigation, manufacturing, etc.) that allow
larger numbers of people to live within a given area. Even where such solutions are found, eventually
population grows and causes the same problems to reemerge on a larger
scale. Hence, the process is
"iterative." In regions in
which no solution is emerges the system
may cycle around the lower conflictive end of the iteration model. Semiperipheral actors are usually the agents
of political expansion, hierarchy formation and technological development.
Competition, conflict and semiperipheral development are world-systemic
processes, not societal ones.
As
Jared Diamond (1998) points out, all continents around the world did not start
with the same animal and plant resources. In Western Asia both plants (barley
and wheat) and animals (sheep, goats, cows, and oxen) were more easily
domesticated than the plants and animals of Africa and the
This model,
illustrated in Figure 2 above, involves complex feedback loops, and by no means
is meant to imply that bigger hierarchies or technological development
inevitably occur in each region. Primary (or pristine) states emerged in
interaction with other states. Virtually all of them occurred in a context that
had already experienced the formation of complex chiefdoms. Thus, as with
ecological succession in the biosphere, higher orders of complexity can only
emerge once the soil of institutional development has been brought to a certain
level of complexity by earlier development.
But this kind of succession does not reoccur in the same place. If it did
Ecology
structures the economics of least effort because it limits available resources
and potential alternative resources. As world-systems become more complex and
hierarchical these ecological limits and potentials change their spatial scale
because of changes in social organization and technology. The comparative world-systems perspective
allows us to see that the scale of ecological constraints grows with the
expanding scale of intersocietal networks and intensification. Thus, continental
and global ecological constraints become more important as world-systems
increased in size. Contrary to what some social evolutionists have argued (e.g.
Lenski and Nolan 2004); complex societies do not transcend ecological
constraints. As the scale of ecological constraints expands, their importance
as intermittent constraints on social change does not diminish overall (for
detailed history for these processes among states see Chew 2003).
Technological
innovations act back on population growth by increasing the number of people
who can be fed and sheltered within a given amount of land. This stimulates
population increase, or more typically reduces the incentives to maintain
cultural and social regulations on population growth. So population density
tends to increase to the point where resources are again pressed. Then the
whole cycle goes around again. As systems become larger, and especially as they
become more diversified, regulation or maintenance of the overall system
becomes more complex. Those systems that develop hierarchical structures are
generally better able to manage these complexities. We are not
proposing a teleological process.
Increasing complexity does not cause hierarchy formation or
extension. Rather, among systems that
face complex regulation, those that develop hierarchical systems tend to
survive more often than systems that do not. But the notion of semiperipheral
development provides an important gloss on this generalization.
How and when
does a high level of conflict created by population pressure and ecological
degradation in a circumscribed setting result in the emergence of a new level
of hierarchy? We note that
hierarchy-formation by conquest occurred most frequently when a semiperipheral
polity conquered an old core. The iteration model combines core-periphery hierarchy
with considerations of "internal" stratification and class struggle.
Semiperipheral polities in precapitalist world-systems generally had less
internal stratification than older core polities. Older core regions
developed greater internal inequalities as well as greater divisions among
different factions in the ruling elites. Semiperipheral marcher states (and
semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms) usually had less class inequality, more
solidarity among elites and more solidarity between leaders and followers. This
gave them an important military advantage over older core regions and allowed
them to conquer entire core regions and construct larger polities.[1] Because semiperipheral polities often
occupied regions that were less ecologically desirable than those occupied by
older core regions (e.g., Kirch 1984), the application of core techniques of
production reached their ecological limitations more quickly. This motivated
polities in stressed regions to take the risks associated with attempts to
conquer the older core chiefdoms and/or to experiment with new technologies.
This model does
not explain the exact kind of social change that takes place. Nor does it
explain where or exactly when social change takes place. But it does provide a
processual backdrop for explaining the most general features of human social
change -- increasing population density, scale, and hierarchy of social
organization. Just as earlier
hierarchies and technological changes were responses to the problems created by
ecological degradation, population pressure and intensified conflict, larger
empires, greater long-distance economic integration and the development of
commodified goods, labor, land and wealth were also responses to these same
problems.
The difference
is that in the iteration model the institutional inventions -- larger empires,
larger markets, and capitalism -- temporarily altered the way in which the
iteration model worked. This was especially true during periods of expansion.
The development of these institutional structures allowed population pressure
to temporarily affect hierarchy formation and technological development
directly rather than through the path of circumscription and intensified
conflict. The demographic and ecological constraints reappear in periods of
contractions, and especially in those extreme contractions that Tainter (1988)
calls collapse.
This modifies
the model in Figure 2 by adding positive arrows directly from population
pressure to both hierarchy formation and technological change (see Figure 3).
When market mechanisms articulate growing scarcities (e.g. deforestation in
Figure.3:Iteration Model with Shortcutting Institutions
Similarly, in
some cases ecological degradation operated directly on technological
intensification rather than by means of increasing conflict. Once the market
mechanism is working, resource scarcities may provoke substitutions avoiding
the disruptive processes of conflict and violent competition.
Rapid population
growth also causes disruption in modern societies. Jack Goldstone (1991)
demonstrates that both reform movements and revolutions originate in the
effects of rapid population growth and a consequent increase in state
expenditures beyond revenues. He argues that, as the revenue gap increases, the
state must either raise new taxes or curtail expenditures. The growth of elite
population (which is often greater than among the non-elite population)
heightens competition for resources and positions. Rising grain prices create
new wealth holders who, if blocked by traditional or new barriers, become
marginal elites. Population growth increases the proportion of young persons,
who due to un- or under-employment become an impoverished group with high
potential for mass action. The increase in poverty further strains state
resources. As conditions deteriorate,
elites and commoners lose confidence in the state and elites struggle for
control and promote reform. If a formerly marginal elite seizes power and if
the prevailing culture has an eschatological tradition, reform radicalizes into
revolution. If any of these components is absent or very weak, reform or regime
collapse are typical results.
Goldstone's
demographic analysis is congruent with the iteration model. However, we disagree with his claim that
world-system processes do not affect state crises. The East Asian and West Asian/Mediterranean
regions he studies had been linked by long-distance trade into a single PGN at
least as early as 400 BCE (see Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997:Chapter 8). In the
first few centuries of the common era this linkage became sufficiently strong
to transmit pathogens from Central Asia to
Goldstone
acknowledges that the severe population losses brought by the Black Death set
the conditions for a rather spectacular population increase a couple of
centuries later when European populations had built up immunities and climate
changes favored increased agricultural production. But Goldstone does not acknowledge that the
pathways along which the pathogens spread were precisely those by which the
Eurasian PGN was linked. That is, the occurrence of epidemics was not an
exogenous, or randomly induced, change, but one that worked along predictable
world-systemic pathways. Now when we add to this the linkages implied by the
correlation of urban and empire growth/decline phases in the Mediterranean/West
Asian and East Asian PMNs (Chase-Dunn, Manning, and Hall 2000; Chase-Dunn and
Manning 2002), the synchronies of the revolutions Goldstone examined are very
likely produced by larger system-wide processes.
Rather than
abandoning the basic iteration model for completely different explanations of
how transformations take place in complex and hierarchical systems, we explain
why the iteration model moves back stage to geopolitical and capitalist
dynamics only to come forth again during periods of collapse and crisis. The
basic demographic, economic, and ecological constraints posited in the
iteration model do not become irrelevant. Rather, institutional superstructures
such as states and capitalist accumulation temporarily overcome these
constraints by raising the pace of spatial expansion and technological
development.[2]
But eventually even these institutional mechanisms run into limitations posed
by the material substratum of demographic, economic, and ecological factors.
These operate somewhat differently in the different transformations, but they
do not ever completely transcend the basic iteration model.
To recapitulate,
population pressure affects hierarchy formation and technological change
directly once states and commodities have come into existence rather than
through the mechanisms of conflict and circumscription. But the path of
causality that goes through conflict and circumscription is yet again important
even in the presence of states and commodities during periods of institutional
breakdown and systemic collapse. In this sense there is a single underlying
model of transformations, though it works somewhat differently once states and
markets have become widespread social forms.
III.
East/West
synchrony of urban and empire growth/decline phases
We have demonstrated that city
growth and empire growth and decline phases occur synchronously in the Central
(West Asian and
Figure 4: Synchrony of Empire Sizes in East and
The synchrony of the growth of
cities and empires in the Central and East Asian PMNs remains a puzzle begging
for an explanation. One possibility is northern Eurasian-wide climatic
fluctuations.
We must note,
however, that micro parasites could also be an underlying cause, spread along
trade networks. As trade increased in density and volume, formerly isolated
disease pools came into contact, unleashing virgin soil epidemics (Crosby 1972,
1986). These epidemics can unleash all sorts of social, economic, and political
changes (Goldstone 1991). As pathogens and hosts adapt to each other, these
diseases become less lethal, and populations recover. Trade then resumes, and
the cycle can repeat as other, formerly isolated disease pools come into
contact, or as new diseases spread along trade networks.
Another possible
explanation may be the world–systemic role played by Central Asian steppe
nomads in linking both ends of the Eurasian continent (Frank 1992; Chase-Dunn
and Hall 1997, Ch. 8). The Mongol Empire briefly brought Western Asia and
Figure 5 is a
diagram that inventories all the hypothesized causes mention above.
Figure 5: Synchronization of East/West Growth/Decline
Phases
IV. The Modern World-System and
Transformations
Our comparative
world-systems approach suggests some tentative conclusions about the nature of
transformations of modes of accumulation and possibilities for the future.
Social and ecological circumscriptions were important features of the
evolutionary changes that took place in tributary modes. Circumscription
emphasizes regional contextual factors that facilitated or constrained
state formation and the intensification of production activities. The
logistical factors involved in long-distance transportation and communications
constrained the emergence of larger empires.
Clearly, there
is little point in conquering a territory if little surplus is produced there
(unless it is a strategic link to a richer zone or an important trade node).
Also, it is far easier to extract surplus from a region that already has an
existing tributary structure. Thus, both the growth of surplus production and
the spread of institutional structures of exploitation facilitated the
construction of larger and larger state structures. As agriculture and states
spread they made possible the erection of larger political structures.
Conversely, one state's possibilities for expansion by conquest were
constrained if neighboring states were powerful enough to prevent conquest.
Thus, contextual features could both constrain and facilitate expansion. Too
little development in adjacent regions made expansion unprofitable, while too
much development prevented it.
The costs of
escape by emigration from large states increased as people became more
dependent upon states for the protection and the maintenance of productive
infrastructure. The tendency for peoples to attempt to escape hierarchies could
be counter-balanced by either coercive force or the infrastructural supports
and trade-based surpluses that the tributary empires were able to muster.
Contextual factors were also involved in the emergence of capitalist
institutions and their spread. Production for exchange was much easier once
more land-efficient technologies of production became widespread, which in turn
facilitated the growth of markets.
Contextual
factors made possible the eventual concentration of many capitalist city-states
in a single region -- the European "dorsal spine." One was the
absence in
Whereas the
tributary modes emerged and developed over the tops of the kin-based modes, the
capitalist mode (commodification) emerged within spaces inside and between the
tributary states. The capitalist mode did not, however, become predominant in
any region until capitalist states emerged in the core of the European
subregion. Though there had been many semiperipheral capitalist city-states,
the first capitalist core state was the
To sum up,
transformations involve circumscription, systemic contradictions, uneven
development, and core-periphery relations. Agents of transformation most often
come from semiperipheral regions. A comparative approach suggests that while
some tributary states (such as
Environmental
degradation continues to push new technological innovations and to exacerbate
population pressure.[3]
We have already argued that the spatial scale of environmental degradation
increases with the size of the system. The case of oil reserves reminds us that
depletion is not the only way in which degradation operates on economic and
political incentives. Degradation is also caused by the side effects of
consumption. Once the system has become global the possibilities of escape from
ecological ruin are greatly reduced. Global industrial development wrecks the
environment on a global scale, whereas earlier intensification wrecked it on a
more local or regional scale.
Taking a
world-systemic approach to these issues also helps analysts to cut through the
tedious debates between doctrinaire Marxists and doctrinaire Malthusians. Both extremes are wrong. The Marxists are right in noting that
population growth is almost never a truly independent variable. Rather, it is deeply embedded in social
structures, especially those that reproduce class and other inequalities. Yet the Malthusians are right in noting the
population pressure is often a key variable in social change. By contextualizing both approaches within a
larger system their interconnections can be explored more fruitfully.
Also, noting
that the ecological impacts of societies increase in scale as world-systems
expand helps us understand both the romantic idealization of ecological
awareness of “tribal” societies and blindness of modern states to ecological
issues. Small societies are embedded in
smaller and more visible feedback processes, so often they must attend to
ecological impacts or perish.
Conversely, the contemporary global system is so complex and so large
that tracing ecological connections has until recently been all but
impossible.
V.
Future Transformations
What do these
observations suggest about possible transformation of the world-system in the
next few centuries? The invention of the
first states took place about five millennia after humans first became
sedentary. The rise to dominance of
capitalism took nearly another five millennia.
Despite it relative newness, capitalism has a much higher rate of social
change and contains such severe internal contradictions that it is unlikely to
continue for more than a few centuries.
What might come next? How? Why?
Clearly, the
contemporary world–system is far from the best of all possible worlds.
Exploitation, oppression, and warfare are endemic and systemically reproduced.
The proportion of national populations killed in "industrial" wars has
risen geometrically (Galtung 1980). Rapid technological advancement has
produced a species–threatening horror (McNeill 1982). Donella Meadows, et al. (1992) suggest
ecological disaster as population exceeds global resources.
Political
ecologists have argued that capitalism is fundamentally different from earlier
modes of accumulation with respect to its relationship to the natural
environment (O’Conner 1989, Foster 2000). There is little doubt that the
expansion and deepening of the modern system global capitalism has had much
larger effects on the biogeosphere than any earlier system. There are many more
people using hugely increased amounts of energy and raw materials, and the
global nature of the human system has global impacts on the environment. Smaller
systems were able to migrate when they depleted local supplies or polluted
local natural resources and this relationship with the environment has been a
driving force of human social change since the Paleolithic. But is all this due
only to capitalism’s greater size and intensity, or is there also something
else which encourages capitalists to “externalize” the natural costs of
production and distribution and produces a destructive “metabolic rift” between
capitalism and nature (Foster 2000)?
Capitalism,
in addition to being about market exchange and commodification, is also
fundamentally about a certain kind of property – private property in the major
means of production. Within modern capitalism there has been an oscillating
debate about the virtues of public and private property, with the shift since
the 1980s toward the desirability of “privatization” being only the most recent
round of a struggle that has gone on since the enclosures of the commons in
The
ongoing debate about the idea of the “commons” –collective property-- is
germane to understanding the relationship between capitalism and nature. The
powerful claims about the commons being a “tragedy” because no one cares enough
to take care of and invest in public property carries a powerful baggage that
supports the notion that private ownership is superior. Private owners are
supposed to have an interest in the future value of the property, and so they
will keep it up, and possibly invest in it. But whether or not this is better than
a more public or communal form of ownership depends entirely on how these more
collective forms of property are themselves organized.
Capitalism
seems to contain a powerful incentive to externalize the natural costs of
production and other economic activities, and individual capitalists are loathe
to pay for the actual environmental costs of their activities as long as their
competitors are getting a free ride. This is a political issue in which core
countries in the modern capitalist system have been far more successful at
building institutions for protecting the national environment than non-core
countries. And, indeed, there is convincing evidence that core countries export
pollution and environmental degradation to the non-core (Jorgenson 2004).
Certainly
modern capitalism has been more destructive of the natural environment than any
earlier system. But it is important to know whether or not this is completely
due to its effects on technology and the rapidity of economic growth, or
whether or not there is an additional element that is connected to the specific
institutions and contradictions of capitalism. Technological development,
demographic expansion and economic growth cause problems for the environment.
But are there better alternatives? And is capitalism more destructive of the
environment than earlier modes of accumulation net of its demographic and
technological effects?
Undoubtedly
the human species can and must do better at inventing institutions that protect
the geobiosphere. Regarding earlier modes of accumulation, certainly some
cultures did better than others at protecting the environment. The institutions
of law, the state and property evolved, in part, as a response to environmental
degradation (recall our “iteration model” above). It is not obvious that
contemporary capitalist institutions are worse than earlier ones in this
regard. The main problem is that the scale and scope of environmental
degradation has increased so greatly that very powerful institutions and social
movements will be required to bring about a sustainable human civilization.
Capitalism may not be capable of doing this, and so those theoretical
perspectives that point to the need for a major overhaul may be closer to the
point than those that contend that capitalism itself can be reformed to become
sustainable.
One solution
would be the development of a world state capable of regulating these
processes. But how might that occur, and what kind of world state would it
be. According to the iteration model a
period of conflict typically precedes state formation. But such a period of
disorder is likely to be fatal to human life. Maybe a near–catastrophe could
create the political will among survivors to inspire formation of a world state
as suggested by Wagar (1999).
Seen in a long
run comparative perspective, the struggle for democratic socialism within core
states, though currently in the doldrums, could be another path to systemic
transformation. Contemporary involvement in electoral politics,
coalition–formation, and in reformist movements represents an adjustment to the
current period of neo-liberal ideological hegemony. As we have seen a new mode
of accumulation builds by accretion in the interstices of an old one. The
continuation of capitalist uneven development will likely spur new broad
populist, anti–systemic movements.
Certainly
capitalism developed as a subsystem in the interstices of another mode of
production. Its individualist and partial rationality thrives in a competitive
and conflictive setting. In contrast,
democratic socialism a mode of accumulation in which the whole arena of
interaction needs to be organized on a collectively rational and democratic
basis in which reciprocity and politically articulated redistribution play an
important role. The interaction of capitalism and socialism has produced an
interactive spiral in which the spatial scale of organization of each has
increased in interaction with the other (see Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000 for
much more elaborate discussions of this possibility).
The
technological dynamism of global capitalism and the extraordinary costs of the
modern arms race led to the reincorporation of the Soviet Union into the
international polity of the capitalist states and to the partial
reincorporation of
What about
semiperipheral development? We have already noted that the communist states
were semiperipheral. Class struggles in the capitalist world-system have been
dampened by nationalism in both the core and in the periphery. In the core the
domination of the periphery and competition with other core states have
operated to reinforce nationalism at the expense of working class solidarity in
several ways. In the periphery peasants and workers have either been suppressed
by elites in alliance with the core or they have made common nationalist
alliances with elements of the elite against the core. So class struggle was
either suppressed or crosscut in both the core and the periphery.
In the
semiperiphery class struggles have been less dampened by the core-periphery
hierarchy. The contradictory interests of semiperipheral elites and masses
regarding alternative development paths have provided contexts in which strong
peasant/worker parties could come to state power. The Russian and Chinese
revolutions are the best examples, but the Mexican revolution and populist
regimes in
The
communications technology that the capitalist world-system has produced can
greatly facilitate the formation of world society while at the same time
allowing people to understand one another's differences. The emergence of
global democracy will require more than an international civil society composed
of national elites, though this is how it is emerging. Trade unions and socialist
parties need to understand the dynamics of the modern world-system and the
prospects for transforming it into a socialist system. This will require
organization at the global level, though that must be linked to local and
regional organizations. Communications technology will help in this grand
organizational task. But a clear understanding of the developmental dynamics of
the capitalist world-system will also be necessary. The processes of
globalization are an important arena of contention for ideological and
organizational hegemony.
Despite the
current hegemony of neo-liberalism we are optimistic about the prospects for
world socialism if we can survive the next window of vulnerability without
bringing on a nuclear holocaust or environmental catastrophe. World state
formation, international and transnational socialist organization and forms of
exchange are, thus, our prescriptions for political action. Further comparative
study of world–systems and earlier systemic transformations will help us to survive
and to build the institutions of a more peaceful and just world. We have made
great advances in the natural and biological sciences that have transformed us
from servants of the gods to kings of the jungle. Social science can now help
us to understand our own past and to shape a more harmonious and wise
collective future.
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Endnotes