Ecosocialism

Summary, part 3

Chapter Three: Ecology and Advertising

Yes, the fault lies in the capitalist system, but radical change must also address problems of consumption. Capitalism has created excessive consumption by the masses, which is the prevailing type of consumption.

It is based on false needs: display, waste, commodity fetishism. We can distinguish between what is an artificial versus an authentic need by unpacking the mental manipulation from advertising.

Manufacturers use marketing techniques, advertising tricks, and planned obsolescence (i.e., constructing objects such that they become obsolete and force the consumer to buy a new one). Without capitalism, there would be no need for advertising. 

Advertising is dangerous for the environment. It is a waste of our limited resources, costs tens of billions of euros in France alone (more than the budget of African countries), cuts down billions of trees to make flyers and brochures, pollutes the air with neon advertisements, and creates so much garbage.

“If you’re looking for a sector of the economy that is useless, that could easily be eliminated without any harm to the populace while saving great outlays on energy and raw materials—what better example than the advertising industry?” (p. 47-48).

Environmentalists understand that we must condemn the consumerism of the West, but how can we fix that? Should we make consumers feel guilty? No.

The harm done by advertising on our consumer culture cannot be undone in one day nor accomplished by only the most virtuous people in society. The undoing of excessive consumption by the passes must involve “a true political battle in which active education by the public authorities must play a role” (p. 48).

In this battle, the good guys will be education, consumer associations, trade unions, environmental movements, and political parties. Together, they must entirely suppress advertising, which has taken an imperialistic effort to “colonize our minds and our behaviors, whose terrible effectiveness cannot be overestimated” (p. 48).

We must create conditions where people can, bit by bit, discover their real and qualitative needs and thus change their consumption patterns. Such conditions look like one where culture, education, health care, and home improvement are valued more than buying the latest new gadget and other useless commodities.

Chapter Four: Chico Mendes and the Brazilian Struggle for the Amazonian Forest

Chico Mendes was an activist whose movement will “continue to inspire new struggles, not only in Brazil but in many other countries and continents” (p. 59). View a timeline of his life here (make sure to Zoom in).

Chapter Five: Ecosocial Struggles of Indigenous People

Indigenous communities have concrete and immediate motivations that exist in conflict “between [the] cultures, ways of life, spirituality, and values” of their communities and the spirit of capitalism (i.e., the subjection of all activity to criteria of profit) (p. 62).

Indigenous communities are at the forefront of ecosocial struggles in Latin America. This is because of both their environmental defense and their alternative way of life to neoliberal, globalized capitalism they propose. Although Löwy mentions Indigenous communities’ alternative way of life, he does not get into it in this book.

Löwy provides several examples of Indigenous resistance:

World Social Forum of Belém in the Brazilian Amazon (2009). This Forum was the first time the emergence of Indigenous communities and traditional populations in the global justice movement was internationally noticed. The Indigenous communities came with a Declaration of Indigenous People at the World Social Forum. They circulated an international ecosocialist declaration. 

Examples of Local Struggles: Peru, 2008-2012. In June 2008, Indigenous communities went against Alan García’s neoliberal government and their authorization of petroleum and wood-exporting corps to exploit the Andes and Amazon. The government, unfortunately, cracked down on protests, which led to many deaths.

In 2011, a new government, run by Ollanta Humala, inherited the Conga Project. The Project allowed mining corporation Yanacocha (owned by North American multinational Newmont) to exploit an open-air gold mine. This polluted nearby rivers and communities directly.

These communities organized with “yes to water, no to gold” chants. The government responded with military suppression and many deaths. Protests in solidarity began popping up all over Latin America and Europe.

The Yasuní National Park Project: Ecuador, 2007-2013. When the Maxus Energy Corporation of Texas began drilling near Yasuní National Park, they discovered 850 million barrels of petroleum in the park and wanted to extract this oil.

Indigenous movement protested and successfully avoided the mining of 400 million tons of CO2 emissions in exchange for compensation from the international community. They successfully proposed that US$3.5 billion over 13 years would be paid to a fund managed by the United States and the United Nations Development Programme to preserve biodiversity and develop renewable energy.

It was one of the only successful international initiatives at the time that was effective because it left petroleum in the ground; making it far more efficient than ‘market for emission allowances’ and ‘clean development mechanisms.’ In 2013, however, Rafael Correa’s government gave up the project and opened the park to oil corporations. Indigenous movement protested and are calling a referendum on the issue.

World People’s Conference on Climate Change: Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2010. In COP15, Evo Morales – the Indigenous president of Bolivia and only head of government to support demonstrations occurring at the conference with the slogan ‘change the system, not the climate’ – later convened the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010.

This became a site of victorious struggles against water privatization Water War. Here, they adopted a resolution with a considerable international effect that critiqued the logic of competition, progress, and limitless growth and prioritized Mother Earth’s protection.

It introduced the concept of the good life/living well/buen vivir into the mainstream, which is a concept “based on satisfaction of real social needs and respect for nature as opposed to the capitalist cult of growth, expansion, and ‘development,’ accompanied by the consumer obsession of ‘always more.'” (p. 71).

Contradictions of South American Leftist Governments. Ecology is not a priority for all left or center-left governments; most do not go beyond the limits of social liberalism (e.g., Brazil, Uruguay, El Salvador, Chile).

Brazil’s Lula de Silva, for example, used to be the head of Workers’ Party, but allowed for the construction of the Belo Monte Dam (the third-largest dam in the world) and a project that allows oil extraction from large reserves several miles under the sea, which had never been attempted before. There were social movements that protested the concession of drilling rights, but not the project itself.

Some countries try and break from these policies, like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. All have anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic governments, but their budgets are “totally dependent on returns from fossil fuels” (p. 73).

Venezuela allows the mass fishing industry. The Bolivian government’s development strategy relies on gas production and mining activities, so they have allowed a highway to be built that deforested the environment. The construction of the highway was protested, which did lead to suspension of the project, but protestors were labeled as “enemies of progress and national development” (p. 74).

In Ecuador, the abandonment of the Yasuní project “shows how easily progressive governments can sacrifice the environment in the interest of oil profits” (p. 74).

Indigenous communities are at the forefront of the ecosocialist movement. Indigenous communities also have cultures and ways of life that “marked the discourse and culture of social and ecological movements, Social Forums, and global justice networks” (p. 75-76). So-called leftist governments that adopt extractive models of development must be taken on.