Organization & Environment

Solving the Ecological Problems 24(1) 54­–73

© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1086026611402010

Socialist Possibilities http://oae.sagepub.com

Andrew W. Jones1

Abstract
In this article, the author identifies three ecological problems of capitalism—growth, technology,
and consumption—that must be solved to develop a sustainable society. Consistent with previous
work, especially in the Marxist ecology tradition, the author argues that overcoming the growth
problem requires an alternative to capitalism. This is necessary, though not sufficient: ecological
sustainability also depends on overcoming the problems of technology and consumption, which
requires an ongoing reform but of a sort only minimally attainable under capitalism. Yet, as the
historical record demonstrates, there are no guarantees that socialist alternatives to capitalism
will be ecologically sustainable. For socialism to be ecologically sustainable, it must (a) represent
a revolutionary break from capitalist approaches toward growth and (b) involve the ongoing
reform of technology and consumption, beyond what is possible in capitalism. Examples from
the Soviet Union and Cuba illustrate the argument.

Keywords
ecology, capitalism, socialism, dialectics, growth, technology, consumption

Ecologists have long hinted that industrial society, or even capitalism, is ecologically unsustain-
able. This has long been true of popular ecologists but has begun to be true of some professional
ecologists as well. For example, in a recent resolution, the American Society of Mammalogists
(2007) argued that “there is a fundamental conflict between economic growth and the conserva-
tion of ecosystems, mammalian populations, and species” and that “a steady-state economy is a
viable, sustainable alternative to a growing economy and is an appropriate goal, especially for
the wealthier nations.” Yet both sorts of ecologists have often been vague about what the alter-
natives are. As Harvey (1996, pp. 176-177) puts it,

Ecologists and to some degree even environmentalists of a more managerial persuasion,

tend to leave so many loopholes in their arguments, litter their texts with so many symp-
tomatic silences, ambiguities, and ambivalences that it becomes almost impossible to pin
down their sociopolitical programs.

Even though in effect they are arguing for a whole new organization of society, one that’s
harmonious with nature. To overcome the problems they see in industrial society would often

1
St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:
Andrew W. Jones, Department of Sociology, St. Lawrence University, 23 Romoda Dr., Canton, NY 13617, USA
Email: ajones@stlawu.edu
Jones 55

require a noncapitalist society, thought they rarely come out and say as much (for a partial
exception, see Speth, 2008).
Three related traditions in environmental sociology—the treadmill of production approach,
Ecological Marxism, and Marxist Ecology—have touched on the question of the ecological
unsustainability of capitalism, and yet only the last of these approaches, Marxist Ecology, is
consistent with the set of propositions I advance in this article.
I argue that a truly comprehensive explanation of capitalism’s ecological problems must itself
be comprehensive and ecological. That is, it must focus on interconnections and relations, the
way that these tie into the system as a whole, and the possibilities of systemic change—for both
capitalism and its (potentially) ecologically sustainable alternatives. Though there may be other
approaches that have these desirable characteristics, I will argue that greater purchase can be
made in understanding both the operation of capitalism as a system and its ecological problems
if the approach is dialectical. The most complete theory of capitalism as a whole system comes
out of Marx’s use of Hegel’s dialectical logic, modified in important ways (e.g., Marx’s constant
use of concrete details and divorce from historical determinism). The advantages of a dialectical
approach is that it is an inherently ecological methodology: it is holistic, focusing on the whole
or totality of the phenomenon; it focuses on the relations or connections between different com-
ponents of the system, highlighting the way that broken connections, or rifts, in the system lead
to ecological pathologies; and it is oriented toward change, especially of those parts of the system
that are contradictory or inadequate (Lebowitz, 2009).
Both the treadmill of production and Ecological Marxism (O’Connor, 1998) approaches fall
short on these criteria. Proponents of the treadmill of production approach are quite insistent that
capitalism’s treadmill of production—its unending, expansion of production—is ecologically
unsustainable (Gould, Pellow, & Schnaiberg, 2008; Schnaiberg & Gould, 2000), and yet they
also argue that the treadmill of production characterizes socialist societies, as well as precapital-
ist societies, and is part of an “enduring conflict” between humans and nature. Thus, while they
have perhaps identified problems of production in general, advocates of this approach have done
little to distinguish capitalist from socialist economies, other than to note that the Soviet Union
had its own treadmill of production (Schnaiberg & Gould, 2000), nor have they done much to
explore the distinctive aspects of the capitalist economy that lead to the treadmill of production.
Though the scholars in this tradition have done important work by insisting that perpetual growth
economies are ecologically unsustainable, they have left unexplored the possibilities of an eco-
logical socialism.
O’Connor’s (1998) Ecological Marxism approach has been criticized for grafting Polanyian
ideas about anticommodification movements onto Marx’s integrated structure. This is problem-
atic from the perspective of this article in that it treats social change in a quasifunctionalist way
rather than a dialectical one (Foster, 2002) and fragments the organic unity of capitalism’s social
and environmental problems by treating them as two contradictions rather than as a single con-
tradiction (Lebowitz, 1996).
Scholars in the Marxist Ecology approach (Burkett, 1999, 2006; Foster, 2000, 2008a) have
done important work demonstrating both that Marx’s critique of capitalism is simultaneously an
ecological critique and in showing that his vision of a socialist society is one of an ecologically
sustainable society. Here, the distinction between capitalist and socialist economies and their
effect on the ecology is explicit. For example, Foster’s (2008a) recent book The Ecological
Revolution analyzes the capitalist crisis, Marx’s ecological vision, and sustainability in socialist
countries. I build on this approach by fleshing out three aspects of how capitalism is ecologically
problematic and systematically tying them to dialectical principles.
The three aspects of capitalism that I identify as leading to ecological problems are its growth
problem, its technology problem, and its consumption problem. I argue that these problems are
56 Organization & Environment 24(1)

unresolvable under capitalism, and then I go on to examine those aspects of socialism that
allow these problems to be solved. This is followed by a brief examination of the Soviet Union
and Cuba to ascertain further the elements of an ecologically sustainable socialism. Before
getting into the details of the problems themselves, it is important to identify their dialectical
derivation and to show that they are essential components of the operation of capitalism as a
system.

Dialectical Structure of Ecological Problems of Capitalism

By analyzing capital as a whole one is able to ascertain the different parts or moments of capital
that lead it to ecological problems. There are five moments or steps that Marx identifies as com-
ponents of capital: (a) the commodity, (b) money, (c) capital in circulation, (d) capital in produc-
tion, and (e) capital as a whole (Lebowitz, 2009).1 The first and last two of these components
correspond to what I identify as the ecological problems of capitalism. The ecological problem
of the commodity is “the consumption problem,” capital in production leads to “the technology
problem,” and capital as a whole leads to “the growth problem.” The second and third of these
components—money and capital in circulation—do not lead directly to ecological problems, as
the logic of money and the logic of capital in circulation do not interact with nature in any con-
crete way. However, this in itself is further indication of the ecological unsustainability of capi-
tal; the complete shielding of these logics from nature’s logic contributes to capitalism’s
metabolic rift with nature.
With a progression of dialectical logic each of the above five moments contains a contradic-
tion that leads to the next concept, and with Marx’s dialectics each concept has to be grounded
in concrete reality. Furthermore, each concept is modified by the development of the logic of the
remaining concepts, and none of the concepts can be truly understood except in relation to all the
other concepts and the system as a whole (Lebowitz, 2009). Thus, to begin, the commodity, the
trading of exchange values, requires money—something that is not necessary with a system
focused on the production of use-values. Together, the commodity and money imply and require
capital in circulation, so that capitalism’s Money–Commodity–Money chains can occur. Capital
in circulation could not occur without the growth of capital, which occurs in capital in produc-
tion, and the unity of capital in circulation and capital in production constitute capital as a whole.
A similar dialectical logic can be applied to capitalism as system. The capitalist system itself,
capital as a whole, also contains a contradiction, whose resolution would involve its transforma-
tion into an ecologically sustainable socialism. The nature of such a transformation would
involve ecological planning, a process that transcends the quantitative limitations of capital
accumulation and incorporates the qualitative relations within society and the society–nature
metabolism that capitalism alienates or separates. Thus, each of the ecological problems of capi-
talism can be seen to have a resolution through ecosocialist planning. Below I lay out the argu-
ment for just such a case, a case that emerges out of the ecological contradictions—problems—of
capitalism.

Ecological Problems of Capitalism

The Growth Problem
The growth problem comes directly out of the nature of capitalism as a machine for the accumu-
lation of capital. Nothing is more central to the capitalist system, nor better distinguishes it from
other economic systems, than its imperative to accumulate capital. From the perspective of capi-
tal, the growth problem is simply a problem of accumulation, of quantitative growth of capital,
Jones 57

rather than being driven by real human needs and in a balanced metabolism with nature. As Marx
(1976, p. 742) famously put it, “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets. . . .
Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production: this was the
formula in which classical economics expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie.”
Unlike the bourgeois economists, Marx does not treat growth and its limits in absolute terms;
the potential for growth, and hence the carrying capacity, of any system of production depends
on the technology employed, the relations of production, and its relations with nature. And yet
(as will be shown in more detail later), growth becomes a problem when it is reduced to the
simple accumulation of capital—an accumulation that does not take into consideration the quali-
tative needs of nature or of humanity. It is precisely the structure of capital accumulation, and its
exclusive emphasis on quantitative growth, that leads to the fracturing of essential qualitative
relations in the human–nature metabolism, between consumers and the labor process, and work-
ers in the labor process that result in the capitalist pathologies of metabolic rift, commodity
fetishism, and alienation. For Marx, it is qualitative considerations that allow an understanding
of the limits to growth for production in general rather than the limits specific to capitalism (Bur-
kett, 2005; Foster, 2008b). Thus, a postcapitalist, ecological socialist mode of production would
have a different (presumably greater) carrying capacity—more potential for sustainable growth—
than in capitalism, because ecological considerations would be built into planning decisions
from the outset. However, the growth problem would be transformed because the understanding
of growth would itself be infused by qualitative considerations: the meeting of human needs
would not be limited (as it is in capitalism) to the purchase of commodities, nor would human
needs be placed outside relations with nature. A focus on qualitative relations means that human
needs are defined by broadly defined use-values, and thus include the quality of the labor process
and relations with nature. Thus, it is through qualitative considerations that growth would be
limited under ecosocialism rather than through arbitrary quantitative restrictions. However, the
logic of capital accumulation systematically excludes qualitative considerations. Thus, the
growth problem is not solvable under the capitalist mode of production; the growth problem is
not solvable when it is treated as an accumulation problem.
Though the ecosocialist resolution of the growth problem is primarily qualitative, the fallacy
of capitalism’s unending growth can be in capitalism’s own quantitative terms.
The growth problem is that capitalism must continually grow and yet operates within an eco-
logical system that has limited resources and capacity to absorb pollution. This problem in its
general form is inherent to capitalism and is not subject to reform; to reform capitalism to zero
growth, if such reform were possible, would be the end of capitalism; capitalism must either
grow or die. And though capitalism’s environmental problems appear to be ameliorated through
greater efficiencies of production, they cannot be solved; capitalism requires constant increases
in consumption, so increased efficiencies buy time, but their benefits are eroded over the long
term by constant growth. Thus, the growth problem is not solvable under capitalism. This, how-
ever, has not prevented arguments to the contrary.
The argument that capitalism can exist without growth goes back to John Stuart Mill
(1848/1965) who argued for an economy in “stationary state” and was picked up by ecological
economists (Daly, 1972) in the 1970s and developed since then. The two striking features of this
literature are (a) how eminently reasonable and humanistic are the stationary economies as
described by these writers and (b) how far they deviate from any historically existing capital-
ism. Mill’s (1848/1965) stationary state economy is one in which capitalists do not control capi-
tal or own the means of production but one in which worker-owned cooperatives do—what
many would argue is not really capitalism at all (Heilbroner, 1992). A hint as to the nonviability
of a stationary capitalism can be seen in a recent report from Britain’s Sustainable Development
Commission (Jackson, 2009, p. 77). The report’s author notes that
58 Organization & Environment 24(1)

virtually no attempt has been made to develop an economic model that doesn’t rely on
long-term growth. Herman Daly’s pioneering work at least defined the ecological condi-
tions of a steady state economy. . . . What we miss from this is the ability to establish
economic stability under these conditions. We have no model for how common macro-
economic “aggregates” (production, consumption, . . . money supply and so on) behave
when capital doesn’t accumulate. . . . In short, there is no macroeconomics for sustainabil-
ity and there is an urgent need for one.

The report does note recent work by the economist Peter Victor (2008), who developed a
simulation model of two low-growth scenarios for Canada. However, the model assumes that
business investment would be reduced by close to half by 2035, with a further decline in
business investment almost sure to follow. This is a model for the phasing out of capitalism (a
system of accumulation, of business investment) rather than a model for a stationary capitalism.

The Consumption Problem

At its base, the consumption problem comes out of capitalism’s inadequacy in meeting human
needs. Capitalism’s consumption problem arises out of three closely related separations (rifts) in
qualitative relations driven by quantitative expansion (capital accumulation).These concern (a)
the way the system of exchange-values alienates use-values from human need, (b) how the
appearance of the commodity is separated from the social conditions that went into its production
(commodity fetishism), and (c) the way that human needs are defined in isolation from humanity’s
relation and metabolism with nature (an ecological commodity fetishism). The last two—
commodity fetishism and ecological commodity fetishism—mean that because of the rifts it
introduces between the use-values attached to any particular commodity and all other use-values,
capitalism precludes the full development of human needs. The human needs that can be met by
consumption of the commodity are separated from the needs that go unmet (by the alienated
workers) in the production of that commodity. Likewise, the needs met by consumption of com-
modities are separated from the human needs that accompany humanity’s metabolism with
nature. But it gets worse than this. The ability of the commodity (capitalism’s “cell-form”) to
provide use-values is tangential to its intended purpose, to win exchange-value (Point a, above).
As I discuss in more detail later, with the development of the marketing industry, this industry
exploits and widens the gap between exchange-values and use-values/real human needs.
Understanding real human needs is the most direct route into the consumption problem. And
real human needs are basis of the contradiction of consumption in capitalism and its potential
dialectical transformation. As Burkett (2005) demonstrates in his meticulous review of Marx
and Engels’s writings on socialist society, the goal of such a society is the development of
human needs. Capitalism develops a tremendous capacity to expand human wants, but because
of its alienated social relations, the products of this expanded production—commodities—only
partially meet human needs. Marx (1970, p. 147, quoted in Coates & Bodington, 1976, p. 9)
argues,

Under private property . . . every person speculates on creating a new need in another, so
as to drive him to a fresh sacrifice, place him in a new dependence and seduce him into a
new mode of gratification. . . . Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as
thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need.

Heller (1976, p. 96) summarizes,

Jones 59

Marx’s description of the dominant system of needs in capitalism. . . . The structure of

needs is reduced to the need for possession, which subordinates the entire system to itself.
. . . Qualitative needs are quantified; needs as ends are turned into needs as means and vice
versa. . . . Relations of interest dominate relationships between human beings.

These passages illustrate how capitalism’s system of needs leads to a drive toward
overconsumption. False needs are created as needs are reified, assumed to be individualistic,
defined externally, and “sold” to individuals. And the imperative of capital expansion forces
these needs to expand.
Production in capitalism is for profit, whereas under socialism (a society of associated pro-
ducers) it could be planned to meet real human needs, and thus minimize the ecological prob-
lem of overconsumption. Marx (1981, p. 959) argues that in such a society

socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a
rational way, bringing it under their collective control, instead of being dominated by it as
a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most
worthy and appropriate for their human nature.

As Heller (1976, p. 121) argues, in this situation,

Society produces for needs; hence the “accidental” character of the market is eliminated. It
is therefore possible, according to Marx, to avoid the “waste” of material goods and pro-
ductive capacities which characterizes capitalism and stems from the fact that production
and needs are brought together only on the market.

The alienation of use-values because of the dominance of exchange-values means that

capitalist economies are organized around the efficiencies of production (of commodities).
Nevertheless, it also means that efficiencies of consumption are neglected—and, moreover,
efficient consumption is discouraged in order to maintain high levels of production. Levels of
waste and disorganization in consumption are permitted, and even encouraged, that would never
be permitted in production. This is a planning problem. This is not to say that consumption
happens on its own, unaided by any planned effort. On the contrary, a tremendous amount of
effort and expertise goes into planning the marketing of consumer goods. However, this effort
is in the service exclusively of expanding consumer purchases, and hence involves a great deal
of waste, unlike the case if consumption were rationally planned to meet human needs (Baran
& Sweezy, 1966; Dawson, 2003; Veblen, 1973).
With the rise of the consumer society in the early 20th century, and its intensification in the
postwar period, a great deal of effort is expended to increase efficiencies of marketing and sales,
but this takes place at the expense of planned and intentional inefficiencies in the use of prod-
ucts by those who purchase them, as Dawson’s (2003) study of the marketing industry carefully
documents. This involves the creation of artificial needs and the failure to meet real needs.
“Marketing studies have repeatedly shown that advertising often affects people’s purchase,
selection and use of commodities; . . . the advertisements are there to force viewers to do unin-
tended shopping” (pp. 102-103). As if this inducement toward overconsumption weren’t
enough, modern capitalist industry, in its marketing and development of products, consciously
withholds quality.

A little digging in marketing discussions of product quality . . . shows that designing products
with excessively high quality is in fact studiously avoided by marketing-era big business
60 Organization & Environment 24(1)

firms. As Kotler and Armstrong [1991] express this marketing rule, “we should not leap to
the conclusion that the firm should design the highest quality product possible.” After all,
too much user- or science-defined quality tends to cause . . . production costs to rise and
extends the time that end users’ needs are satisfied with the product, slashing into or . . .
killing repeat purchases. (Dawson, 2003, pp. 85-86)

The satisfaction of real (user- or science-defined) needs is sacrificed because “modern big
business product planners’ first priority is the perception rather than the reality of product
quality” (p. 86).

The Technology Problem

The technology problem is closely linked to the growth problem, because only with the techno-
logical development of the industrial revolution does the accumulation process of capitalism
really take off, through the systematic development of what Marx terms “relative surplus value.”
Likewise, the quantitative overwhelming of qualitative change that characterizes capitalism’s
growth problem makes its appearance in technology though what is known as Jevons’s paradox—
the wasting of qualitative efficiencies through unending quantitative growth.
The technology problem concerns the specific technologies that are employed in production.
Some technologies are far more “efficient” than others in their use of resources, in the pollution
they produce, and the level of harm they cause to ecosystems. The general way that technology
develops under capitalism is that the cost of resources is factored in when a new technology is
adopted, but ecological costs are not. The ecological destructiveness of production is a by-prod-
uct of this neglect. This describes, in a general way, the ecological harm that results from maxi-
mizing profits while externalizing environmental costs, but historically the incorporation of
environmental neglect into production processes takes off with the industrial revolution (Foster,
1999). The development of new technologies truly accelerated in this period. And it was the
technologies of the industrial revolution onward that are the root of contemporary global envi-
ronmental problems: from the fossil fuels that power its machinery, to the steam engine, rail-
roads, automobiles, and earth moving equipment that have led to the destruction of species and
their habitats, to the industrialization of farming, fishing, and forestry, to the development of
chemical, nuclear, and biotechnology industries that threaten the chemical and genetic environ-
ment of ourselves and other species. Clearly, civilizations prior to the industrial revolution were
able to degrade their local ecosystems (Chew, 2001), but it was not until capitalism unleashed
this unregulated set of new technologies that humans threatened the ecosphere.
Technology is a core concept in Marx’s analysis, and the technology problem can also be
explained on that basis. For Marx, it is humans’ ability to use tools that makes them fully
human. Grundmann (1991, pp. 109-110) argues that

Marx was so obsessed by the feature of technology . . . that he focused on it in all his major
theoretical works. . . . First, Marx sees technology as part of the human condition, as the
means by which man exercises and regulates his Stoffwechsel [metabolism] with nature.
Second, Marx was aware of the importance of the productive forces for the development
of the mode of production, for the evolution of the relations of production, and, specifi-
cally, he was interested in the role of machines and machinery for the emergence of capital-
ism; likewise, he was interested in the technological basis of communist society.

Thus, understanding technology is essential to understanding human relations with nature and
with understanding capitalism and its alternatives. Technology is also key to the emergence of
Jones 61

capitalism. Grundmann (1991, p. 192) argues that Marx “wants to stress that capital has found in
machinery its adequate mode of production . . . , which is to say that before the use of machinery
the mode of production could not be called capitalist:

Modern Industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instru-
ment of production, and to construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this, that
it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation, and stood on its own feet (Marx, 1976,
p. 363).

As Marx (1976) describes it, it is only with the revolutionizing technology of the industrial
revolution that we get the truly massive amounts of output of modern capitalism, the basis for
the growth problem. Before this, absolute surplus-value is increased by lengthening the work
day or intensifying the work pace. However, through technological innovation and by improving
the organization of production, relative surplus-value is increased. It is through these technological
(and organizational) innovations that capital can increase the productivity of the production
process.
However, with capitalists choosing which technologies to employ, these revolutionizing tech-
nologies are chosen to maximize profits, not according to any environmental or social criteria.
This means that the environmental “efficiencies” of extant technologies are woefully underde-
veloped.2 The technology problem, though closely related to growth, is thus not synonymous
with growth, and much of the problems of damaging (dirty) technologies can be solved by
replacing them with more ecologically benign (clean) technologies. The difficulty with the
growth and technology problems under capitalism is that any qualitative improvements in tech-
nology that lead to greater efficiencies are soon overwhelmed by capitalism’s inexorable quanti-
tative growth. Efficiencies, in fact, free up capital and increase the rate of growth, something
known as “Jevons’ paradox” (Clark & Foster, 2001). This means that the distinction between
dirty and clean technologies is overwhelmed by growth. A large enough number of cleaner prod-
ucts will be more environmentally destructive than smaller number of dirtier products.
Yet the Jevons’ paradox contains the kernel of rationality that allows the pathologies of accu-
mulation to be transformed into ecologically planned growth. This suggests that a solution lies in
allowing technological improvements to serve qualitative goals rather than the quantitative goals
that they do under capitalism. Once freed from the growth imperative of capital accumulation,
technology can be employed to use resources more efficiently, and thus overcome capitalism’s
Jevons’s paradox where technological efficiencies are used to stoke the fires of even greater
resource use.

Solving the Growth, Consumption, and Technology

Problems Under Capitalism
As suggested above, the health of capitalism requires that the growth problem remain unsolved,
but the (long-term) health of the ecosphere requires that it be solved. Successfully addressing the
growth problem means (eventually) replacing capitalism. Citizen movements have been able to
at least partially block profitable technologies such as biotechnology and nuclear power on envi-
ronmental grounds.3 However, as Schnaiberg, Pellow, and Weinberg (2002) suggest, growth
coalition politics usually prevail in capitalist countries, because growth serves the interests of
both capitalist and political elites and promises jobs and the prospect of pay increases to workers.
There are no prospects for solving the growth problem under capitalism, though no-growth poli-
tics sometimes makes limited headway at local levels in these countries.
62 Organization & Environment 24(1)

Technology Problem
Current technology is capitalist technology; it was designed to serve the interests of the quantita-
tive expansion of capital. These interests include cutting labor costs and imposing capitalist
control over the labor process (Braverman, 1974; Child, 2004), as well as externalizing environ-
mental costs. A socialist technology, were it to be developed, would presumably ensure sufficient
and meaningful employment and protect the environment, for the very reason that its develop-
ment would not be subject to the antienvironment and antilabor imperatives of capital. Yet to
develop a whole new technological apparatus requires high levels of economic and scientific
development. Thus, the problem of growth can best be solved at high levels of development,
which are a result of growth. This is a dialectical relation rather than a simple, mechanical rela-
tion. The growth problem can only be overcome when it is linked to the technology problem.
Growth can only be overcome when technologies begin to serve qualitative interests, and this
technology can only be developed where there has been a sufficient amount of growth. Likewise,
the technology problem is not solvable when it is not linked to solving the growth problem of
capitalism, as Jevons’s paradox illustrates.
Solving the technology problem partly takes pressure off the environmental degradation
caused by the growth problem, and this can partly be done under capitalism, as new technologies
develop their own class interests. There is some evidence that once new technologies are devel-
oped, capitalist class interests will be divided between newer, greener technologies and dirtier,
older ones. Thus, renewable energy industries would be at odds with fossil fuel industries, and
the organic farming industry would be at odds with chemical-based agribusiness. Thus, instead
of class unity among the capitalist class, there would be class cleavages. This is in fact the case
for what happened within the oil industry, where ExxonMobil pursued a dirtier strategy and Shell
and BP pursued a strategy that kept open the option for alternative energy (Pulver, 2007). How-
ever, this suggests that these divisions would prevail only in cases where dirty industry was in
the process of being replaced by a profitable cleaner technology. An attempt at closing down or
cleaning up of a dirty technology, without a profitable replacement, would likely lead to capital-
ist class unity in opposition. For these reasons, and the political power of the vested interests, it
is likely that the technology problem—the terribly destructive technologies unleashed by the
industrial revolution on the environment—can only be fully solved under socialism. And Jevons’s
paradox illustrates that even if the technology problem were solvable under capitalism, the
growth problem is not, thus any ecological efficiency gains made from greener technology would
soon be overwhelmed by their sheer growth in scale. The logic of capitalist growth means, under
capitalism, the development of ecologically sustainable technologies is severely constrained by
the profit motive, and the abandonment of hazardous technologies is almost beyond the pale.4

Consumption Problem
Capitalism’s ecological reform of consumption is limited to the macro level and the production
of social goods, whereas reform away from the production of commodities and toward the direct
provision of use-values is impossible under capitalism, since the production of commodities and
increasing commodification is essential to capital accumulation. Nevertheless, a limited reform
in the provision of social goods is possible, provided it does not interfere with capitalism’s life-
blood of the production and sale of commodities to individuals.
Thus, at the level of individual consumption, the consumption problem in capitalist countries
is one of a massive misplanning effort (over 1 trillion dollars per year in the United States alone
according to Dawson, 2003, p. 1), aimed at the profit maximizing overconsumption of products.
But the problem of consumption also manifests itself at the level of social goods, and here the
Jones 63

problem is one of underplanning and underinvestment. Galbraith writes about the social imbal-
ance between the private goods, such as cars, and public goods, such as well-planned collective
transportation systems, something he terms “private luxury and public squalor” (Sackrey & Sch-
neider, 2002). Galbraith’s point is that private goods can only be enjoyed when there are suffi-
cient public goods—such as good roads and parks—with which to enjoy them but that public
goods are underappreciated and undersupplied because billions of dollars are spent each year
advertising private goods but next to nothing to advertise public goods.
Planning can do more than make private goods more usable or valuable; it can also lead to
increased efficiencies in consumption by creating collective goods that displace the need for
private goods. An example of this can be found in the intensive planning process in Curitiba,
Brazil. City planners in Curitiba have systematically created public transportation and public
spaces, giving cars much less access, increasing building densities, and increasing the attractive-
ness of pedestrian spaces, that auto use is the lowest of any Brazilian city (Hawken, Lovins, &
Lovins, 1999). In the process they have made cars less useful and the attractiveness of noncom-
modified public space more useful. As a result, residents have moved into urban areas and use
the cheap public transportation rather than driving. These collective efficiencies in transportation
have resulted in lower consumption and use of autos, with the resulting ecological benefits.
This focus on collective or social consumption is entirely consistent with Marx’s vision of a
postcapitalist society of associated producers, in which social consumption displaces much
individual consumption:

“What the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him
directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.” Such social consumption
will, in Marx’s view, be “considerably increased in comparison with present-day society
and it increases in proportion as the new society develops.” (Burkett, 2005, p. 40; quota-
tions from Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program, pp. 7-8)

Solving the consumption problem—the problem of disorderly and individualistic

consumption—would directly affect the growth of consumption. Thus ultimately, and perhaps
quite quickly, this approach would be at odds with capitalism’s imperative for growth.
Essentially collective planning is a decommodification strategy, but it is through commodification
that capitalism realizes its growth imperative. As a way of dealing with scarcity, during a time
of economic or ecological crisis, collective planning might be a way of providing collective
benefits when growth rates are declining. Ultimately, however, the planning problem is about
easing excessive (and increasing) levels of individual consumption, and this requires an
alternative to the education provided by advertising. To resocialize people away from a
consumer culture would require the elimination of advertising, and this could only happen under
socialism.5

Socialism and the Ecological Problems

If the growth problem is not solvable under capitalism, and the technology and consumption
problems are only partially solvable, the question arises: How effective could socialism be at
solving these problems? The briefest answer is that under capitalism accumulation -unending
growth -is a requirement of the economic system, whereas under socialism it is a political choice.
This follows from the fact that without capital accumulation capitalist economies have no basis
for investment in economic activities and thus would grind to a halt (Marx, 1976), whereas in
socialist economies collective investments can be made with no expectation accumulation
(though presumably there would be an expectation for growth in human development (Lebowitz,
64 Organization & Environment 24(1)

2006). Nor does mixing the state sector and the private sector—as is done in welfare capitalism
or in market socialism—allow for solving the growth problem. Mixed economies depend on the
treadmill of production and accumulation to fund the state sector and are therefore dependent on
the drive for never-ending growth. Thus, the growth problem is insolvable under any form of
capitalism, although it may be solvable under socialism, depending on the political structures
and directions that it takes. These were dilemmas that the Soviet Union faced as it struggled
between implementing capitalist versus socialist organization and logics of production.
An immediate advantage that a socialist country has, is to the extent that it is able to eliminate
class antagonisms, it will require much less growth to achieve human development. Wealthy
classes drive the growth problem—both directly, through their consumption of wealth, and indi-
rectly, through the emulation of other social classes wanting to become wealthy. Since much
luxury consumption involves conspicuous consumption and waste (Veblen, 1973), with the
attenuation of class, the collective planning of consumption can be directed toward real needs
and away from ecologically destructive overconsumption. Though for the consumption problem
to be solved, the development of a new system of consumption and a new system of needs must
take the place of the capitalist system of needs and consumption. A formerly capitalist country
without any collective (socialist) development remains poor on capitalist terms—because no
alternative system of needs has developed. Thus, to escape capitalist values, and to realize the
much greater social and ecological efficiencies of a socialist system of needs, development must
take place. And although this development may be decommodified, it does require growth in
order for it to take place. Solving the technology problem also requires the growth of an alterna-
tive, ecologically benign, system of technology. Thus, to solve the planning and technology
problems, socialist countries need growth initially in order to create an alternative to the technol-
ogy and consumption regime it inherits from capitalism. Almost all examples of socialist coun-
tries were unable to solve the technology problem because they were behind the advanced capitalist
countries in technology, though Cuba has been a partial exception to this.
Any newly socialist country must, then, be engaged in ongoing reform of these capitalist
structures. Only with a thoroughgoing reform of dirty technologies, including the development
of new greener technologies and abandonment of hazardous technologies, can any economic
system begin to overcome the ecological disaster unleashed by the industrial revolution. Other-
wise, socialist countries take on capitalist technologies (and to some extent consumption pat-
terns) as part of their basic infrastructure. In a very real sense, to speak of substantial ecological
reform is to refer to possibilities under socialism, not under capitalism.
However, there are no guarantees that socialism will solve any of these problems. Without the
political will and the intellectual and material resources to develop alternative systems of pro-
duction and consumption, a newly socialist country retains the capitalist structures that damage
the environment. And in the absence of ongoing reform and a politics that is flexible enough to
incorporate ecological concerns, the growth imperative that under capitalism is a structural
necessity, can under socialism become institutionalized through bureaucratic means. A plan that
sets goals in quantitative terms coupled with a bureaucratic structure, which sets rewards in
terms of meeting that plan, is another way of creating a growth imperative, of creating a socialist
growth-coalition politics. A number of scholars have argued that the Soviet Union created just
such a growth-coalition structure, one that did not create an environmentally benign technology
and an ecological system of needs (Foster, 1999; Schnaiberg & Gould 2000).
However, in the absence of democratic planning it is difficult to imagine that consumers
would care or be connected to work processes that create commodities and to the ecological
consciousness involved in limiting consumption. As Marx (1976) points out, the commodity
form hides the social conditions of its production, leaving the consumer to “fetishize” the com-
modity while overlooking the exploitation that produced it. The ill effects produced by the
Jones 65

separation between consumption and production can be extended to the ecology. Only when
knowledge of the conditions and effects of production is restored to consumption can social and
ecological exploitation be ended. However, this is a qualitative relation, and one that can only be
restored when the direct producers and communities make decisions about production and con-
sumption. A quantitative target decided by a political elite only serves to perpetuate commodity
fetishism and its negative social and environmental effects.
Thus, successfully addressing the ecological problems of capitalism requires both a revolu-
tionary break from capitalist economies—to even have the possibility of solving the growth
problem—and a strategy and a political system of continuous reform—to solve the technology
and planning problems, as well as the growth problem. The fundamental ecological problem of
capitalism—that it requires unending exponential growth—is not solvable without a revolution-
ary change in the economic system away from capitalism.6 However, a revolution that does not
include reform in terms of growth, technology, and consumption is one that is not ecologically
sustainable. And reform that stops short of revolutionary change in the economy is likewise not
ecologically sustainable in the long term.

Ecological Problems and the Transition to Socialism

So far the discussion of socialism and the environment has remained fairly abstract. In reality, the
treatment of ecological problems under socialism depends greatly on the nature of the transition
to socialism. Does the transition occur in rich or in poorer countries? Does it occur in one or a
handful of countries or does it occur across all rich countries (presumably spreading around the
world)? A country’s level of development affects the resources it has for solving the growth
problem, as well as its technological capacity for solving the technology problem. And being
surrounded by hostile capitalist countries makes it more difficult to follow an ecological path, in
terms of both growth and technology.
The historic fragmentation of the socialist movement in the early 20th century made it difficult
for socialism to overcome the ecological problems of capitalism and for it to realize its ecologi-
cal potential. At the end of the World War I, when Germany did not become socialist, despite its
large socialist party, and Russia did, despite its underdevelopment, the prospect of a unified
socialist strategy was broken. Out of this situation came the split between the Second and Third
Internationals, with social democracy the dominant strategy of the developed countries, and state
socialism for countries that had undergone a socialist revolution. Later, national liberation move-
ments for the Third World made a third strand (Wallerstein, 1990). This fragmentation made it
difficult for the left to reach its social goals but made it even harder for it to address ecological
problems. In the developed countries, the unity of ecological reform and revolution was broken,
to be replaced by the limited reform allowed in capitalist countries. And in the socialist and
newly decolonizing countries the emphasis was on growth. With perhaps few exceptions,
nowhere was the link between solving the growth and technology problems maintained. Coun-
tries that had the technological capacity to address the technology problem were firmly capitalist
with its resulting problem of unending growth, and left movements within these countries tended
to pursue strategies of reform within capitalism. Countries that were decolonizing had neither the
technological capacity to address the technology problem nor the level of economic development
to address the growth problem. And countries that had state socialism were so set on the growth
path that they could not alter their technology in a green direction and so were unable to address
either the growth or the technology problems.
And yet out of this seemingly unpromising situation have come new possibilities (and contra-
dictions) from Cuba for an ecologically sustainable socialism.
66 Organization & Environment 24(1)

Growth Problem
Numerous problems that were encountered in actually existing socialism were not anticipated by
Marx. For one thing, he expected socialism to occur first in the most economically advanced
countries, not in the semideveloped or underdeveloped counties where it in fact occurred. Thus,
many of the problems with growth, from needing to achieve basic development to catching up
with more economically advanced rivals, were unanticipated. For another thing, Marx expected
that after socialism occurred in one country it would rapidly spread to all the other economically
advanced countries, and then worldwide (Marx & Engels, 1988). Had this happened, many of the
problems that were experienced by actually existing socialism would have been avoided. The
resources and technological capacity of the advanced economies would be put at the disposal of
reaching socialist principles, and presumably interstate competition would be minimized, since
the basis of imperialism (in capitalism) would be absent.

Actually Existing Socialism and the Environment

It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the environmental record of actually existing
socialism in any detail, though a brief examination is in order. In many ways, examples of actu-
ally existing socialism involved revolution without an ongoing basis of reform. One of the key
difficulties is that socialist revolutions occurred in semideveloped or developing countries, not in
the advanced capitalist countries. Thus, none of these countries had fully developed economies
and the advantages this gives in addressing the growth and technology problems. Rather, these
countries were in the position of trying to catch up with the advanced economies, and this typi-
cally involved borrowing the technologies of these countries.

Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, goals were set in quantitative terms, and the first 5-year plans included
heroic goals, and then all means were mobilized to achieve these unrealistic goals (Magdoff,
2002). To reach these growth levels, production processes (including Taylorist control over the
work process) and technologies were imported wholesale from capitalist countries. Ongoing
reform was sacrificed to meet the goal of quantitative growth. Since 5-year plans stressed heroic
numerical targets, a massive mobilization of existing technologies was employed meet them, in
an echo of the ecological destructiveness of capitalism. And the lack of democracy meant that the
ecological movements that by the 1970s led the West to cleaner technologies left the Eastern bloc
with older, dirtier technologies (Singleton, 1987; Ziegler, 1987). Ecological movements became
part of the dissident movements challenging Party rule but had little effect on altering industrial
policy.
This is not to say that the Soviet Union did not face extraordinary external challenges. It did. It
was invaded by Western armies soon after the Bolsheviks came to power, and again by Germany
two decades later, as it took the brunt of the fighting in World War II. Underdevelopment and
destruction wrought by war put the USSR firmly on a growth path. And the Cold War confirmed its
leaders’ all-out push for growth. Technological innovation was largely channeled into military
development and the affiliated space program (Singer, 1999; Sweezy, 1980). Thus, external factors
were not at all conducive for the USSR to develop an “eco-socialism.” And it did not.
However, ecological potentials were present in the Soviet Union that arguably developed as a
result of its attempt to develop socialism. There was a great upwelling of ecological thinking that
coincided with the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet years. In 1926, Vernadsky published
his pioneering book, Biosphere, which argued that the earth’s atmosphere was produced by life
Jones 67

itself (Foster, 2000). Capra (1996) argues that it was not until James Lovelock came up with his
Gaia theory in the 1970s that this idea was again put forth by a scientist. Likewise, from 1912 to
1917, Bogdanov developed a systems theory equal in scope to the well-known systems theory
developed by Bertalanffy 20 to 30 years later (Capra, 1996). And Bukharin, as he languished in
one of Stalin’s jails in 1937, developed a comprehensive ecological and socialist theory (Foster,
2000). These examples suggest that at many points along the way there was the potential to link
ecological concerns with socialist policy and politics but that a concern with growth or a narrow
focus on quantitative measures prevented this linkage.
The early intellectual development of ecology was accompanied by national conservation
planning with the advent of Goskomitet (the State Interagency Committee for Conservation) in
1925 (Weiner, 1988). Unfortunately, this ecologically based planning was no match for growth
imperatives of the Plan. Weiner (1988, p. 168) writes,

With the advent of the First Five-Year Plan [1928-1932] the national imagination of Soviet
Russia was stirred to dizzying heights, to borrow Stalin’s notorious phrase. . . . This ebul-
lient optimism was combined in the early 1930s with a great fear that if Soviet Russia
failed to accomplish its economic miracle it would be overcome by the dark forces that had
kept Russian in backwardness for so many centuries. . . . This fear was elementally
expressed in another of Stalin’s aphorisms: “We are fifty to one hundred years behind the
most advanced countries. We must close this gap in the span of ten years. Either we do that
or they will sweep us away.”

Still, ecologists within government planning agencies fought for ecologically sustainable
development and “the need to correlate the procurement norms for the various species [of plants
and animals] with their natural rates of reproduction” (Weiner, 1988, p. 88). At the Conservation
Congress of 1929, “one of the most widespread convictions among the mass of delegates was
that, somehow, something had to stand between the juggernaut of the Five-Year Plan and Rus-
sia’s natural resources and that ‘something’ was the Goskomitet” (Weiner, 1988, pp. 91-92).

M. P. Potemkin . . . deputy president of the Goskomitet . . . forcefully defended the conclu-

sions of the committee’s majority that the First Five-Year Plan targets of the economic
agencies had far exceeded the bounds of good sense. [R]egion by region and species by
species, Potemkin painted a picture of the plan’s targets as an orgy of irrationality. In the
Murmansk-White Sea region, for example, the plan called for a [tripling] in the annual
catch of seals . . . and so the plan’s targets were simply a prescription for quick catastrophe.
. . . Potemkin likewise wondered how the Five-Year Plan’s annual projected take of 350 sea
otters in the Far East and the Pacific could be attained when the entire population num-
bered only about 450. Again, it was a recipe for extinction. (Weiner, 1988, p. 88)

By the early 1930s, however, ecologists began to lose what influence they did have, both
politically and intellectually, as the politics of growth tightened its grip. “By a cruel coincidence
theoretical ecology in the Soviet Union was making its greatest strides precisely at the time that
the social and philosophical climate became increasingly unpropitious for its further development”
(Weiner, 1988, p. 164).

Cuba
In some ways, as a smaller, less developed country, Cuba was an even less propitious site for
ecological revolution and reform than was the Soviet Union. Yet, in an uneven, and at times
68 Organization & Environment 24(1)

contradictory way, Cuba has developed important practices that begin to solve, and that give
insights into solving capitalism’s ecological problems. These have included organic agriculture
and medicines, an anticonsumerist ideology, and its response to the drastic shrinking of its energy
inputs in the 1990s. Yet Cuba has not been able to remain isolated from capitalist countries or
practices (especially since the collapse of the Soviet bloc), and this has resulted in contradictions
in its development of an ecological socialism.
As a socialist country, advertising and marketing was banned and an anticonsumerist ideology
was promoted, so from the outset the capitalist impediments to solving the consumption problem
were removed. As a poor country, it was dependent on imported capitalist technology, and it had
too few material and intellectual resources to develop alternatives. However, because of its
socialist priorities in education and science as it developed, Cuba required much less growth to
achieve technological competence than a comparable capitalist country would. And the technol-
ogy that it has developed has been dedicated (primarily) to the public good rather than to profit
as in capitalist countries (which in the latter case has indirect benefits, achieved only after profit
is realized, and is hence is a less efficient use of growth). As a socialist country, Cuba has been
able to use technology more efficiently to achieve public and environmental goals (including the
avoidance of harm) than could a capitalist country. And with its extensive provision of public
goods (notably in health and education) and its anticonsumerist ideology, especially in the early
years following the revolution, it has been able to avoid consumerism and partially solve the
consumption problem.
Yet as an island of socialism in a world mostly of capitalist countries, postrevolutionary Cuba
has encountered limits (some self-imposed) in its ability to develop socialism, especially its eco-
logical aspects. At the time of the revolution, Cuba was a very underdeveloped country, depen-
dent on imports for almost all of its industrial goods as well as much of its food consumption.
Foreign exchange capital was necessary to purchase these goods. The revolutionary government
initially tried to decrease its food dependence through the expansion of nonexport agriculture
(while expanding production of export crops) as well as develop the human capacities of the
population through education and health programs (Huberman & Sweezy, 1961). There was also
a program to develop industry, especially in sugar refining and nickel mining, as part of an
import substitution strategy. In this period, the technologies that were employed were off-the-
shelf and little concern was given (or perhaps could be given) to employing green technologies.
Because industrial development initially was not economically successful, and because other
socialist countries made favorable trade agreements for Cuba’s sugar, the decision was made to
concentrate on sugar production (Huberman & Sweezy 1969). The heroic target of 10 million
tons per year was set, and although this target was never met, great effort was extended in this
direction.
Economic growth was important not only to raise the quality of life of Cuba’s population, but
also to earn capital or credits for the export market, both with the Western bloc and Soviet bloc
countries. Yet as Eckstein (1980, p. 270) makes clear, despite

the continued impact of world market forces and policies of Western bloc countries, impor-
tant institutional and cultural changes have occurred within Cuba that cannot be explained
in terms of maximization of profit. The Cuban government does intervene, regulate, and
modify the way global forces impinge on the economy to the extent that the international
capitalist order now has less impact than it did before Castro assumed power and less
impact than it did in most ‘peripheral’ capitalist countries.

One of the implications of the (partial) decommodification of the economy that took place in
Cuba is that the link between growth and meeting human needs is much closer than it is in
Jones 69

capitalist countries. Thus, the solutions to the growth and the planning problems are much closer
and are tied into the development of indigenous, socialist technology, as the following section
makes clear. A reason for this is that the various forms of alienation that take place under capital-
ism were reduced under Cuban socialism. This decommodification even affects Cuban growth
statistics. As Eckstein (1980, p. 272) notes,

It should be kept in mind that the growth rate in [Cuba] would be higher if Western mea-
sures were used: the Castro regime excludes “nonproductive” services, such as health and
education, from their material product statistics, and it is precisely in the service realm that
the island has scored some of its most impressive achievements.

Decommodified Development and Solving the Technology and Growth

(and Consumption) Problems
By the 1990s, government investments in education and efforts to develop technology had begun
to bear fruit with the development of a world-class pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry
(Nature, 2005; Lage Dávila, 2006) and expertise in agriculture. Cuba is 2% of the population of
Latin America, yet has 11% of its scientists, and yet this science is directed toward solving social
problems rather than to maximize profits.

For instance, by recognizing that the [capitalist] pharmaceutical industries develop only
those medications for which there are large and lucrative markets, the Cubans have been
able to select areas of research that are ignored, because the knowledge is not easily turned
into commodities, or because the disease is uncommon among the wealthy. Thus Cuba has
been in the forefront in work on retinosa pigmentosa, vitiligo, and malaria. (Lewontin &
Levins, 2007, pp. 351-352)

A great deal of effort is thus put into meeting true human needs; disease prevention is argu-
ably among the most important of human needs. And the same logic of foregoing the maximiza-
tion of profit applies to avoiding technologies that damage the environment, something that
simply does not happen in the capitalist world.7

In the absence of the obscene race for patents, Cuba has the capacity to wait and see what
unexpected consequences an innovation may have. Cubans have been working with genet-
ically modified organisms for more than seventeen years but have not released any GMO
plant varieties, because they are still exploring the possible risks to the environment.
(Lewontin & Levins, 2007, p. 349)

This is not to say that there were not contrary pressures that pushed Cuba toward quantitative
growth and to gain revenues from foreign trade. The pressures and contradictions between
pursuing commodified economic growth and pursuing ecological development came to a head
in the “special period” crisis in the early 1990s after the Soviet bloc collapsed and Cuba lost its
subsidized inputs. In the wake of this crisis, there was both the wholesale development of
organic agriculture and a reliance of the government on a commercialized tourism sector and the
increasing introduction of the market into the Cuban economy.
By the end of the 1980s, Cuba had developed the most industrialized agriculture in Latin
America, with a heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. At this time sugar planta-
tions covered three times more farmland than did food crops and Cuba had to import 60% of its
70 Organization & Environment 24(1)

food, all from the Soviet bloc (Pfeiffer, 2006). However, with the cut off of subsidies from the
former Soviet Union, and half of the gasoline and a fourth of chemical fertilizers, it undertook a
massive conversion to organic agriculture. This was eased by the fact that research into ecologi-
cal agriculture had begun in the 1980s (Pfeiffer, 2006). This involved the technological innova-
tion of agriculture scientists, the revival and revaluing of the preindustrial farming knowledge of
older farmers, and the collective planning that built up this new farming system, as well as one
of the largest urban farming programs in the world. Structurally, this involved breaking up large
state farms and converting them into smaller worker-owned cooperatives, where farmers could
develop the intimate knowledge with every piece of farmland that is necessary in agroecological
practice (Pfeiffer, 2006). Since 85% of Cubans live in urban areas, and since refrigeration was
prohibitive due to energy, quickly giving use of all vacant urban land to gardens allowed much
of urban vegetable consumption to be supplied locally (Pfeiffer, 2006).
At least in agriculture, Cuba has begun to fulfill the promises of socialism for addressing the
technology and the planning problems. Though this was in no sense automatic; it occurred in
response to debates about ecology among scientists and officials and in response to a massive
energy crisis. Unlike similar debates over ecology in the late 1920s in the Soviet Union, the ones
in Cuba in the 1990s resulted in the ecological position prevailing.

Conclusion
Capitalism creates three ecological problems, relating to growth, technology, and consumption.
Capitalism is a system that, in its very logic, is dedicated to growth, growth that over time will
overwhelm any ecological efficiencies from green technology or green consumerism. This makes
capitalism ecologically unsustainable. This growth imperative also inhibits the development of
public goods and other collective initiatives that could reduce consumption. Limiting consump-
tion precipitates economic crisis (as well as hurting the interests of capital); hence, the state and
other collective actors are limited in their ability to plan for human needs beyond the bounds of
consumerism. And the development and use of green technologies are restricted by profit imper-
atives. Thus, to resolve the long-term ecological crisis, attention must be directed to alternatives
to capitalism.
Socialism, especially in its forms that are most distant from capitalism, opens up the possibil-
ity that these ecological problems can be solved. However, there are no guarantees that socialism
will do this, especially concerning the problem of growth. Historically, socialism has existed in
only a few countries and has not been able to escape the pressures from a capitalist world, nor
often many of its practices. Yet the Soviet Union and, much more strongly, Cuba have achieved
some insights and practices that point the way toward solving capitalism’s ecological problems.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1.  Smith (1990, especially pp. 209-210) has a more elaborated series of steps in his analysis of Marx’s
dialectical progression in Capital than does Lebowitz, but the particular steps are the same.
2.  But it cannot be assumed that pollution and dirty technologies are necessarily linked to profits. Freud-
enberg (2005) finds that by far the greatest polluters of toxic waste in the chemical industry are by
Jones 71

generally unprofitable and inefficient firms. This is similar to the point that Mol (1997) and other pro-
ponents of the ecological modernization thesis make when they argue that as industry modernizes in
response to environmental regulation and citizen pressures, environmental problems diminish.
3.  This list of profitable technologies that have been delayed by citizen protest could be expanded to in-
clude stem cell research, and animal rights protesters have certainly increased the costs of doing animal
research, as labs have had to pay for added security.
4.  For example, although Rachel Carson (1962), in Silent Spring, called for the abandonment of the
pesticide production, all that has resulted in the almost 50 years since then has been the banning of
a few pesticides such as DDT in richer countries (though not in many poorer ones). And this is the
result of one of the most influential environmental books of all times, the book that many credit as
having launched the modern environmental movement. This illustrates how limited ecological reform
under capitalism has been. Yet James O’Connor (1991, cited in Pepper, 1993) makes the argument that
capital, were it able to act in its long-term interests, would protect the environment (enough to ensure
the survival of capitalism). However, he argues that individual capitalists have no such incentive, and
for this reason capitalism is unlikely to protect the environment. And the abandonment of hazardous
technologies would undoubtedly hurt individual capitals, and even whole industries. Thus, it is hard to
imagine the Chamber of Commerce, in any possible scenario, advocating the abandonment of nuclear
power, for example.
5.  See discussion in text and Dawson (2003) for a thorough discussion of this. Coming to grips with the
problems of overconsumption would require either eliminating the 1-trillion-per-year (in the United
States alone) marketing industry, or redirecting it to collective social purposes (as Dawson recom-
mends). The former simply could not happen in a capitalist economy, as it would cripple industrial
profits and capitalist growth, and the latter would be socializing it, redirecting the research and com-
munication apparatus of the marketing industry toward user- and science-defined needs, something
that could only happen as part of a larger socialist planning of the economy. A rational planning of
consumption in this way, especially one that took ecological limits seriously, would eliminate much
overconsumption and would presumably go a long way toward solving the growth problem. With the
absence of economic growth, the economy could no longer be capitalist, and some sort of collective
(presumably socialist) planning would have to take its place.
6.  It is quite another question, and one not answerable here, whether this revolutionary change is possible
through electoral means or whether it requires violent revolution.
7.  Literarily almost every environmental battle over technology in the capitalist world takes place after
the technology has been deployed and its ill effects start to become evident. Then the battles over tech-
nology involve fighting entrenched interests.

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Bio
Andrew W. Jones is Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Lawrence University. He is interested in
organic integrity in social and ecological systems and the way that inequality (class, race, gender, nation)
disrupts that integrity. He is currently researching the cultural and structural roots of the ecological crisis,
and is interested in environmental movements. He has published in American Sociological Review, Social
Forces, Sociological Forum, and Mobilization.