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Global Ecology and the Common Good
By John Bellamy Foster
"The Treadmill of
Production"
(Editors' note:
This essay is a revised version of a keynote luncheon address delivered at
"Watersheds '94," a conference organized by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. The piece was originally published in 1995 and is
reprinted here by permission of John Bellamy Foster and Monthly Review.)
1. Over the
course of the twentieth century human population has increased more than
threefold and gross world product perhaps twentyfold. Such expansion has
placed increasing pressure on the ecology of the planet. Everywhere we
look--in the atmosphere, oceans, watersheds, forests, soil, etc.--it is now
clear that rapid ecological decline is setting in.1
2. Faced with
the frightening reality of global ecological crisis, many are now calling
for a moral revolution that would incorporate ecological values into our
culture. This demand for a new ecological morality is, I believe, the
essence of Green thinking. The kind of moral transformation envisaged is
best captured by Aldo Leopold's land ethic, which said,
We abuse land because we regard it as a
commodity belonging to us. When we begin to see land as a community to which
we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
Yet behind most appeals to ecological morality
there lies the presumption that we live in a society where the morality of
the individual is the key to the morality of society. If people as
individuals could simply change their moral stance with respect to nature
and alter their behavior in areas such as propagation, consumption, and the
conduct of business, all would be well.2
3. What is all
too often overlooked in such calls for moral transformation is the central
institutional fact of our society: what might be called the global
"treadmill of production." The logic of this treadmill can be
broken down into six elements. First, built into this global system, and
constituting its central rationale, is the increasing accumulation of wealth
by a relatively small section of the population at the top of the social
pyramid. Second, there is a long-term movement of workers away from
self-employment and into wage jobs that are contingent on the continual
expansion of production. Third, the competitive struggle between
businesses necessitates on pain of extinction of the allocation of
accumulated wealth to new, revolutionary technologies that serve to expand
production. Fourth, wants are manufactured in a manner that creates an
insatiable hunger for more. Fifth, government becomes increasingly
responsible for promoting national economic development, while ensuring some
degree of "social security" for at least a portion of its
citizens. Sixth, the dominant means of communication and education are part
of the treadmill, serving to reinforce its priorities and values.3
4. A defining
trait of the system is that it is a kind of giant squirrel cage. Everyone,
or nearly everyone, is part of this treadmill and is unable or unwilling to
get off. Investors and managers are driven by the need to accumulate wealth
and to expand the scale of their operations in order to prosper within a
globally competitive milieu. For the vast majority the commitment to the
treadmill is more limited and indirect: they simply need to obtain jobs at
livable wages. But to retain those jobs and to maintain a given standard of
living in these circumstances it is necessary, like the Red Queen in Through
the Looking Glass, to run faster and faster in order to stay in the same
place.
5. In such an
environment, as the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer once said, "A man can do what he wants. But he can't want
what he wants." Our wants are conditioned by the kind of society in
which we live. Looked at in this way, it is not individuals acting in
accordance with their own innate desires, but rather the treadmill of
production on which we are all placed that has become the main enemy of the
environment.4
6. Clearly, this
treadmill leads in a direction that is incompatible with the basic
ecological cycles of the planet. A continuous 3 percent average annual rate
of growth in industrial production, such as obtained from 1970 to 1990,
would mean that world industry would double in size every twenty-five years,
grow sixteen fold approximately every century, increase by 250 times every
two centuries, 4,000 times every three centuries, etc. Further, the tendency
of the present treadmill of production is to expand the throughput of raw
materials and energy because the greater this flow, from extraction through
the delivery of final products to consumers, the more opportunity there is
to realize profits. In order to generate profits, the treadmill relies
heavily on energy-intensive, capital-intensive technology, which allows it
to economize on labor inputs. Yet increased throughput and more substitution
of energy and machines for labor mean a more rapid depletion of high-quality
energy sources and other natural resources, and a larger amount of wastes
dumped into the environment. It is unlikely therefore that the world could
sustain many more doubling of industrial output under the present system
without experiencing a complete ecological catastrophe. Indeed, we are
already overshooting certain critical ecological thresholds.5
7. Matters are
made worse by the tendency in recent decades to move from "gross
insults" to the environment to "microtoxicity." As synthetic
products (like plastic) are substituted for natural ones (like wood and
wool), the older pollutants associated with nineteenth-century
industrialization are being replaced by more hazardous pollutants such as
those resulting from chlorine-related (organochlorine) production--the
source of DDT, dioxin, Agent Orange, PCBs, and CFCs. The degree of toxicity
associated with a given level of output has thus risen fairly steadily over
the last half century.6
8. It would
seem, then, that from an environmental perspective we have no choice but to
resist the treadmill of production. This resistance must take the form of a
far-reaching moral revolution. In order to carry out such a moral
transformation we must however confront what the great American sociologist
C. Wright Mills called "the higher immorality" built into the
institutions of power in our society--in particular the treadmill of
production. "In a civilization so thoroughly business-penetrated as
America," he wrote, money becomes "the one unambiguous marker of
success . . . the sovereign American value." Such a society, dominated
by the corporate rich with the support of the political power elite, is a
society of "organized irresponsibility," where moral virtue is
divorced from success and knowledge from power. Public communication, rather
than constituting the basis for the exchange of ideas necessary for the
conduct of a democracy, is largely given over to "an astounding volume
of propaganda for commodities . . . addressed more often to the belly or to
the groin than to the head or the heart." The corrupting influence that
all of this has on the general public is visible in the loss of the capacity
for moral indignation, the growth of cynicism, a drop in political
participation, and the emergence of a passive commercially centered
existence. In short, the higher immorality spells the annihilation of a
meaningful moral and political community.7
9.
Manifestations of this higher immorality--in which money divorced from all
other considerations has become the supreme reality--are all around us. In
1992 alone U.S. business spent perhaps $1 trillion on marketing, simply
convincing people to consume more and more goods. this exceeded by about
$600 billion the amount spent on education--public and private--at all
levels. Under these circumstances we can expect people to grow up with their
heads full of information about saleable commodities, and empty of knowledge
about human history, morality, culture, science, and the environment. What
is most valued in such a society is the latest style, the most expensive
clothing, the finest car. Hence, it is not surprising that more than 93
percent of teenage girls questioned in a survey conducted in the late 1980s
indicated that their favorite leisure activity was to go shopping. Not long
ago Fortune magazine quoted Dee Hock, former head of the Visa bank
card operation, as saying, "It's not that people value money more but
that they value everything else so much less--not that they are more greedy
but that they have no other values to keep greed in check." "Our
social life is organized in such a way," German environmentalist Rudolf
Bahro has observed,
that even people who work with the hands are
more interested in a better car than in the single meal of the slum-dweller
on the southern half of the earth or the need of the peasant there for
water; or even a concern to expand their own consciousness, for their own
self-realization.
Reflecting on the growing use of pesticides in
our society, Rachel Carson wrote that this was indicative of "an era
dominated by industry, in which the right to make money, at whatever cost to
others, is seldom challenged."8
10. Given the
nature of the society in which we live, one must therefore be wary of
solutions to environmental problems that place too much emphasis on the role
of individuals, or too little emphasis on the treadmill of production and
the higher immorality that it engenders. To be sure, it is necessary for
individuals to struggle to organize their lives so that in their consumption
they live more simply and ecological. But to lay too much stress on this
alone is to place too much onus on the individual, while ignoring
institutional facts. Alan Durning of the Worldwatch Institute, for example,
argues that
we consumers have an ethical obligation to
curb our consumption, since it jeopardizes the chances for future
generation. Unless we climb down the consumption ladder a few rungs, our
grandchildren will inherit a planetary home impoverished by our affluence.
This may seem like simple common sense but it
ignores the higher immorality of a society like the United States in which
the dominant institutions treat the public as mere consumers to be targeted
with all of the techniques of modern marketing. The average adult in the
United States watches 21,000 television commercials a year, about 75 percent
of which are paid for by the 100 largest corporations. It also ignores the
fact that the treadmill of production is rooted not in consumption but in
production. Within the context of this system it is therefore economically
naive to think that the problem can be solved simply by getting consumers to
refrain from consumption and instead to save and invest their income. To
invest means to expand the scale of productive capacity, increasing the size
of the treadmill.9
11. Even more
questionable are the underlying assumptions of those who seek to stop
environmental degradation by appealing not to individuals in general but to
the ethics of individuals at the top of the social pyramid and to
corporations. Thus in his widely heralded book, The Ecology of Commerce,
Paul Hawken argues for a new environmental ethic for businesspeople and
corporations. After advocating an ambitious program for ecological change,
Hawken states, "Nothing written, suggested, or proposed is possible
unless business is willing to embrace the world we live within and lead the
way." According Hawken,
the ultimate purpose of business is not, or
should not be, simply to make money. Nor is it merely a system of making and
selling things. The promise of business is to increase the general
well-being of humankind through service, a creative invention and ethical
philosophy.
Thus he goes on to observe that,
If Dupont, Monsanto, and Dow believe they are
in the synthetic chemical production business, and cannot change this
belief, they and we are in trouble. If they believe they are in business to
serve people, to help solve problems, to use and employ the ingenuity of
workers to improve the lives of people around them by learning from the
nature that gives us life, we have a chance.10
12. The central
message here is that businesspeople merely have to change the ethical bases
of their conduct and all will be well with the environment. Such views
underestimate the extent to which the treadmill of production and the higher
immorality are built into our society. Ironically, Hawken's argument places
too much responsibility and blame on the individual corporate manager--since
he or she too is likely to be a mere cog in the wheel of the system. As the
great linguistics theorist and media critic Noam Chomsky has explained,
The Chairman of the board will always tell you
that he spends his every waking hour laboring so that people will get the
best possible products at the cheapest possible price and work in the best
possible conditions. But it is an institutional fact, independent of who the
chairman of the board is, that he'd better be trying to maximize profit and
market share, and if he doesn't do that, he's not going to be chairman of
the board any more. If he were ever to succumb to the delusions that he
expresses, he'd be out.11
13. To be
successful within any sphere in this society generally means that one has
thoroughly internalized those values associated with the higher immorality.
There is, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith has pointed out, a
"culture of contentment" at the top of the social hierarchy: those
who benefit most from the existing order have the least desire for change.12
14. Resistance
to the treadmill of production therefore has to come mainly from the lower
echelons of society, and from social movements rather than individuals. This
can only occur, to quote German Green Party leader Petra Kelly, if
ecological concerns are "tied to issues of economic
justice--exploitation of the poor by the rich." Behind every
environmental struggle of today there is a struggle over the expansion of
the global treadmill--a case of landless workers or villagers who are
compelled to destroy nature in order to survive, or large corporations that
seek to expand profits with little concern for the natural social
devastation that they leave in their wake. Ecological development is
possible, but only if the economic as well as environmental injustices
associated with the treadmill are addressed. An ecological approach to the
economy is about having enough, not having more. It must have as its
first priority people, particularly poor people, rather than
production or even the environment, stressing the importance of meeting
basic needs and long-term security. This is the common morality with which
we must combat the higher immorality of the treadmill. Above all we must
recognize the old truth, long understood by the romantic and socialist
critics of capitalism, that increasing production does not eliminate
poverty.13
15. Indeed, the
global treadmill is so designed that the poor countries of the world often
help finance the rich ones. During the period from 1982 to 1990, the Third
World was a "net exporter of hard currency to the developed
countries, on average $30 billion per year." In this same period third
World debtors remitted to their creditors in the wealthy nations an average
of almost $12.5 billion per month in payments on debt alone. This is equal
to what the entire Third world spends each month on health and education. It
is this system of global inequity that reinforces both overpopulation (since
poverty spurs population growth) and the kind of rapacious development
associated with the destruction of tropical rain forests in the Third World.14
* * *
16. For those of
you with a pragmatic bent, much of what I have said here may seem too global
and too abstract. The essential point that I want to leave you with,
however, is the notion that although we are all on the treadmill, we do not
all relate to it in the same way and with the same degree of commitment. I
have found in my research into the ancient forest struggle in the
Northwest--and others have discovered the same thing in other settings--that
ordinary workers have strong environmental values even though they may be at
loggerheads with the environmental movement. In essence they are fighting
for their lives and livelihoods at a fairly basic level.15
17. We must find
a way of putting people first in order to protect the environment.
There are many ways of reducing the economic stakes in environmental
destruction on the part of those who have little direct stake in the
treadmill itself. But this means taking seriously issues of social and
economic inequality as well as environmental destruction. Only by committing
itself to what is now called "environmental justice" (combining
environmental concerns and social justice) can the environmental movement
avoid being cut off from those classes of individuals who are most resistant
to the treadmill on social grounds. The alternative is to promote an
environmental movement that is very successful in creating parks with Keep
Out! signs, and yet which is complicit with the larger treadmill of
production. By recognizing that it is not people (as individuals and in
aggregate) that are enemies of the environment but the historically specific
economic and social order in which we live, we can, I believe, find
sufficient common ground for a true moral revolution to save the earth.
Notes
1
James Gustave Speth, "Can the World Be Saved?," in Anthony B.
Wolbarst, Environment in Peril (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1991), pp. 64-65.
2
Leopold, The Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press,
1949), p. viii.
3
The concept of the "treadmill of production" is taken from Allan
Schnaiberg, The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 205-50, and Schnaiberg and Kenneth Allan
Gould, Environment and Society (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1949),
p. viii. In Schnaiberg's earlier work the treadmill is situated in the
historical context of monopoly capitalism as described in Paul Baran and
Paul Sweezy's Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966)
and James O'Connor's, Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1973). It should be noted that the third element of the
treadmill listed in the text above--the revolutionization of the means of
production on pain of extinction--is attenuated in certain ways under
monopoly capitalism, but still remains a general tendency of the system.
4
Schopenhauer quoted in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York:
Dell, 1964), p. 20.
5
Chandler Morse, "Environment, Economics and Socialism," Monthly
Review 30, no. 11 (April 1979): 12-15; Petra K. Kelly, Thinking
Green! (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1994), pp. 22-23. The tendency of the
system to draw upon ever larger throughputs of raw materials and energy was
countered somewhat by increasing energy efficiency (measured by the ratio of
GDP to commercial fuels consumed) in the advanced capitalist countries in
the 1970s and early 1980s. Since the mid-1980s, however, progress in this
respect has slowed as a result of falling energy prices. In the United
States, which uses about as much energy as the entire Third World, energy
efficiency has remained essentially unchanged since 1986. See Lester Brown
et al., Vital Signs 1992 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), pp. 54-55,
and Vital signs 1994, pp. 126-27.
6
Speth, "Can the World Be Saved?," p. 65.
7
Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp.
338-61.
8
Kevin J. Clancy and Robert S. Shulman, Across the Board, October
1993, p. 38; The Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1993
(Lanham, MD: Bernan Press, 1993), p. 147; "The Money Society," Fortune,
6 July 1987, 26-31; Bahro, Socialism and Survival (London: Heretic
Books, 1982), p. 31; Carson, "Silent Spring--III," The New
Yorker, 38, no. 19 (June 30, 1962): 67.
9
Durning, How Much Is Enough? (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), pp.
136-37; Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred (San Francisco:
Sierra Club Books, 1991), pp. 78-79.
10
Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp.
1-2.
11
Chomsky interview, Bill Moyers, ed., A World of Ideas (New York:
Doubleday, 1989), p. 42.
12
Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1992).
13
Kelly, Thinking Green!, p. 25; Ben Jackson, Poverty and the Planet
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), pp. 182-83; Raymond Williams, Resources
of Hope (London: Verso, 1989), p. 221.
14
Quotation from Cheryl Payer, Lent and Lost (London: Zed Books, 1991),
p. 115; also Susan George, "The Debt Boomerang," in Kevin Danaher,
ed. Fifty Years Is Enough (Boston: South End Press, 1994), p. 29.
15
Foster, "The Limits of Environmentalism Without Class," Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism, 4, no. 1 (March 1993): 11-41; Thomas Dunk,
"Talking About Trees: Environment and Society in Forest Workers'
Culture," The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 31,
no. 1 (February 1994): 14-34.
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