11 theses on the revolutionary struggle for nature

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The climate crisis triggered by fossil capitalism is progressing rapidly and threatening human life worldwide, but it is affecting people in the Global South and those from the lower classes particularly severely. However, resistance is rising in the name of nature against the exploiting classes. What characterises the struggle for/about nature? What is the relationship between humans and nature? In order to create a basis for the practical work of Aufbau on the topics of the climate crisis and ecology, we have analysed these and other questions. This process resulted in 11 theses, which now serve as a basis for our work. They are thematically closely linked and should be read as a whole. The theses should not be understood as all-encompassing and finalised. We welcome feedback and solidarity-based criticism.

Humans are a part of nature. At the same time, they are a special feature of nature, as they can recognise their own relationship to nature and consciously reshape it. This distinguishes them from the rest of nature.

Humans perceived nature, which they could not control, as a blind and irrational force that confronted them. In a struggle lasting thousands of years, they learnt to control it better and better. However, they paid for this domination and their emergence from nature with the emergence of a ‘kind of second nature’ (Lukacs) ‘whose course confronts them with the same inexorable regularity as the irrational forces of nature did in the past.’ This second nature is the capitalist relations of production.

Production under capitalist relations is determined by the purpose of profit. It therefore abstracts from concrete use values and concrete labour. Which commodity is produced is not decisive, since the commodity is produced as a carrier of exchange value. Nature is incorporated into this production process as a means of production or an object of labour, abstracting from its concrete qualities, its own laws and the effects on itself. For the purpose of production, the realisation of profit, it is irrelevant whether damage is caused to nature and people in the process. Where nature itself becomes a commodity, it is merely a carrier of exchange value, a means of realising profit.

Capital is forced to accumulate, i.e. to grow, because of the way it functions. At the end of every production process, there must be more profit than was necessary at the beginning of the investment. Due to competition, no individual capital can escape this compulsion to grow; the advantage of competitors would sooner or later mean its downfall. This compulsion to grow is directly responsible for the increasing destruction of nature. However, the capitalist relations of production are not consciously entered into, but appear as economic constraints. It is therefore irrelevant whether the individuals responsible also have an ‘ecological awareness’. ‘Capitalist production therefore only develops the technique and combination of the social production process by simultaneously undermining the sources of all wealth: the earth and the worker. (Karl Marx)

That capitalism inevitably destroys nature and thus itself is a false theory of collapse. Earlier predictions of the automatic demise of capitalism, which were based on economic laws, have also proved to be wrong. Since its inception, capitalism has proven to be very adaptable and versatile, and all predictions of its automatic demise have been wrong. This is where the function of the state as an „ideal total capitalist“, which knows how to protect capital from itself, is particularly evident. But the survival of nature under the rule of capital is a mere vegetation: Progressive destruction of habitats, extinction of animals and plants, desertification of land, air pollution, water pollution, multiplication of extreme weather phenomena such as floods, droughts, hurricanes and fires – all these are the obvious effects of this rule. They particularly affect the lower classes and the exploited countries of the tricontinent, which is why the fight against the destruction of nature is first and foremost a class struggle. However, the subjective interest of the proletariat in fighting against the destruction of nature coincides here with the objective interest of humanity as a whole.

When we talk about capitalism, we are referring to a social relationship. At its core, it is not about questions of distribution and property, but about the way in which people relate to each other. Capitalist production relations also determine the relationship between people and nature. In other words, the core issue is not about mitigating the destruction of nature or about alternative technologies, but about changing people’s relationship to nature. Therefore, there can be no technical solutions to the question of ecology.

Technology is not neutral, but is characterised by its social conditions. This is particularly evident in the socialist experiences in the Soviet Union and China. The revolutionary line of the Chinese communists criticised the adoption of capitalist production techniques under socialism and sought practical alternatives to them. It has shown that adopting the technology of capitalism also entails a corresponding consciousness. This concerns the relationships between people as well as the relationship with nature. Even if awareness of ecological issues was at best rudimentary at the time, we can learn a lot methodologically from these experiences.

Issues of individual consumption are used by capital as a moral diversionary tactic to shift responsibility for environmental destruction onto individuals. They obscure the social nature of the ecological question and must never be at the centre of it. However, the fact that the environmental movement is already seeking a new relationship with nature should be seen as a reaction to the alienation from nature under the rule of capital and therefore a step in the right direction.

Nature is not a subject in the struggle, which distinguishes this area of struggle from all others. (This is why the struggle for animals is not comparable to the class struggle) The environmental movement fights for nature, which itself cannot fight. However, since humans are also a part of nature, the struggle for the dignity of nature is also a struggle for their own dignity.

The cause of the environmental movement cannot be reduced to an abstract scientific criticism of climate change or global warming. The movement is not only fighting against the destruction of nature, it is also fighting for nature. There is obviously a strong positive connection to nature, which gives these movements strength and determination. However, this positive reference also arises because nature is perceived as the antithesis of the social conditions that capital produces. Lukacs writes about this meaning of the concept of nature: ‘It is increasingly a matter of the feeling that social forms (reification) strip man of his essence as man, that the more culture and civilisation (i.e. capitalism and reification) take possession of him, the less able he is to be man. And nature becomes – without having become aware of the complete reversal of the meaning of the term – the container in which all these inner tendencies working against increasing mechanisation, desecration and reification are combined.’

The separation between humans and nature cannot be reversed. But the relationship is a dialectical one. Humans are both part and non-part of nature. Under capital, however, the separation appears increasingly absolute. Humans become increasingly alienated from nature and thus also from themselves. As a reaction to this alienation, however, there have always been attempts to overcome it. The 19th century labour movement already had nature associations and the attempt to find a new relationship with nature is an important part of the environmental movement. There can be no going back to nature in the sense of an original unity with nature. But there can be a forward-to-nature in the sense of a dialectical cancellation of separation, a forward to a differentiated unity with nature and a relationship of cooperation.

‘And so we are reminded at every step that we by no means rule nature, as a conqueror rules a foreign people, as someone who stands outside nature, but that we belong to it with flesh and blood and brain and stand in its midst, and that our entire dominion over it consists in […] being able to recognise its laws and apply them correctly. […] The more this happens, however, the more people will not only feel, but also know themselves to be one with nature again’ (Friedrich Engels)