Ecological resistance
The overall aim of the workshop “Defending Life” is to collectively explore and develop an approach that builds connections between theoretical insights and practical actions, working to democratize society within today’s “Capitolocene”—an era in which capitalist domination pervades all aspects of life, bringing us to the brink of ecological disaster. This approach must engage with broad theoretical concepts and enable their connection to the specific practices relevant to each concrete struggle or movement on the ground. In this effort, we seek to highlight the neo-colonial aspects of capitalist modernity as well as the role of women, and explore the flow of the “river” of democratic modernity.
The concrete objectives of this workshop are:
- To map ecological crises across Europe,
- To outline Europe’s role in the global ecological crises, including global warming,
- To identify ecological struggles and cultures of resistance within Europe,
- To jointly develop tools to strengthen awareness and resistance,
- To foster relationships and lay the groundwork for enduring connections between the workshop participants.
Particular attention will be given to moving beyond positivistic and purely analytical methodologies, breaking with deterministic approaches to better understand the complexity and interconnectedness of today’s crises.
The ecological problem of capitalist modernity
Reports of environmental disasters in different parts of the world are published every day. These events are all manifestations of a single, overarching ecological problem, which is deeply embedded in the current hegemonic system and its economic, cultural, and institutional expressions.
The ideological narratives that suggest ‘humanity’s’ responsibility for the climate and ecological crisis are misleading. The crisis is caused by a specific way in which the life of society, thus its economy, are organized and administered by nation-states and capitalism: To realize maximum profit, goods are produced and the needed natural elements extracted continuously, using them without considering the natural cycles by which these elements are replenished, destroying ecosystems and producing waste and greenhouse gas emissions. In this sense, the notion of Capitalocene is more appropriate than the misleading notion of Anthropocene.
In order to understand the root of the ecological problem of capitalist modernity, it is necessary to consider the historical, political and ideological processes of separation, appropriation and accumulation of nature.
Human beings and society are inherently part of nature. Therefore, the separation of humanity and nature must be viewed as a construct of patriarchal civilisation, and it is dating back 5,000 years. This separation has enabled the appropriation of women as the “first colony” for reproduction and demographic control by dominant men, and the appropriation of nature as a provider of raw materials in the production process, thus a hierarchical mentality in which the man dominates women and nature. At the same time, knowledge passed down from generation to generation, and the culture in which women played a key role was taken over by the ruling and elderly classes, closely linking knowledge to power. The accumulation of raw materials, assets, and of power of knowledge has enabled growth and perpetuation of this civilisation over time that has lasted for 5,000 years to the present day.
Colonialism makes the exploitation of natural elements possible by an apparatus functional to the repression, assimilation and to a “societicide” of populations of many geographies, outside and inside Europe. The energy supply necessary for the industrial apparatus, developed from fossil fuels but increasingly involving renewable energy production, along with the re-emergence of nuclear energy, is made possible by constant control, through war, embargoes, corruption, and propaganda on places along strategic routes to the centres of power in the Global North. Not only do war conflicts and weapons testing areas cause destruction and irreversible pollution of territories, but the ecological crisis will cause an exacerbation of the conflicts themselves, will have to be managed by governments through the military. Colonialism also had an impact on agriculture and territory management of societies, requisitioning land to produce pleasure foods for Europe and Northern America and making countries dependent on them for the production of essential foods.
Industrialism is a key issue in the ecological problem because industry consumes fossil fuels, land, water, life, and all other resources, poisoning the environment. Industrialism expresses the political character of industry when it is put at the service of the only principle underlying the movement of capitalism: dominating and accumulating capital/profit. The pursuit of profit and capital does not enable industry to establish a harmonious relationship with the living and non-living beings, but instead piles up enormous contradictions.
Class conflict and the management of the ecological crisis are closely connected: On the one hand, the hegemonic class uses cheap labour to feed the destructive industrial system; on the other hand, it dictates that society pays for the consequences of ecological crises. The exploitation of “nature” and society are linked as two sides of the same reality: They are forms of subjugation of societies and territories. To feed this system, a narrative that encourages the accumulation of goods and a certain way of life has been created.
This narrative impacts every aspect of life and the way societies are organised: production of food, urbanism and transport as well as vital services (schools, hospitals), and has created a competition for land use that divides societies.
In this context, war is a phenomenon closely linked to the ecological problem. Often, the reason is the domination of natural resources, and as the planetary ecological crisis grows, this clash becomes more intense. However, war is also a phenomenon that destroys both society and the environment, why we can say that it is an ecological disaster in itself. An ecological struggle is a struggle against war.
In order for these phenomena to be accepted and implemented by human beings, hegemonic civilization has systematically destroyed and erased social morality, eroding society’s natural self-defense characteristics, such as the ability to decide how to manage its common resources, build its own institutions, and educate new generations. To conduct this destructive enterprise, the syste of the capitalist modernity educates human beings to hierarchy and consumerism, particularly in the Global North.
Challenging the hegemonic ideology
European civilisation is based on anthropocentrism, androcentrism and imperialism. In fact, the historical, political and ideological processes of separation, appropriation and accumulation of women and nature are the basis of the civilisation that have developed in Europe to such an extent that it has become the hegemonic ideology throughout the world.
Capitalism is attempting to find technological solutions to ecological and social crises, but these cannot work. In fact, these are always partial, solving a specific (quantifiable) problem but neglecting the more systemic reasons that would involve questioning power, hierarchies and exploitation. These technological solutions are supposed to leave the ideological structures of liberalism and individualism unchanged, and therefore, in the end, they do not solve the social and ecological problem.
In the process of objectification extended to every area of reality, we can trace its roots. Human beings, living beings and the non-living are on a varied hierarchical scale submitted, as objects, to the hegemonic subject. The subject sees itself as external to an inanimate object reality that it can then manipulate for its own purposes. We can say that the subject’s perspective today is that of the male, adult, white, rich.
The final product of this process is positivist science. It is capitalist modernity’s own way of seeing the world. Positivist science analyses reality by breaking it down into disciplines, rejecting a holistic view and neglecting the network of relationships. It pretends to measure and reduce everything to indices, failing to have a vision that understands problems in a deeper way. Similarly, positivism fails to understand why society suffers so much in capitalist modernity. In this sense, relying on positivist science means continuing to reproduce the problem by perhaps displacing it (to other social sectors or other
territories), and delaying it.
Capitalism, industrialism, and colonialism are expressions of this ideology of power and the dominant man. Therefore, when analysing ecological problems, we must always contextualise them within social and economic problems. The current ecological crisis is thus a product of capitalism, but it has also deeper roots: It comes from a deep construction of social mentality, based on the binomial command-obedience, power- hierarchy, which finds its culmination in the capitalist system. The shape of social relations gives body to the system, i.e. to its mechanisms, its dynamics, which ultimately generate the current ecological, social, and economic crisis. From this perspective, the field of ecology is connected to all others: Environmental issues must be considered in their social, economic, political and cultural context. Environmental protection, for example, is a matter of societal self-defense, since its destruction poses a threat to life on the entire planet Earth. Moving towards this new equilibrium is a strategy of self-defence for society, because keeping society and nature apart, continuing in this cycle of alienation and destruction, is a threat to life itself.
In order to escape from the mentality based on hierarchy and exploitation, it is essential to bring to light the relationship with nature that capitalism has stripped from society and whose traces still resist in Europe. Empowering an ecological society also comes from engaging with cosmogonies and cosmovisions of other geographies that have resisted processes of colonization and assimilation, and that are the basis of struggles for self- determination of indigenous populations such as those in Abya Yala ( this is the word used by the indigenous people to refer to the American continent).
Towards a new Ecological Paradigm
It is necessary to develop adequate epistemological tools which enable us to analyse reality in the most useful way for a process of liberation and defence of life. What are the fundamental categories through which to analyse reality? It is important to reconstruct the process that led to the current situation. What clashes, what choices, what crossroads were taken in history. Through what dialectic can we analyse this path? In this way, we can understand along which direction the democratic forces must strengthen their efforts.
It is possible to analyse historical developments as a dialectical relationship between the pole of power/state/patriarchy and the pole of free cooperation of society in its plurality. In this dialectical development, the dominant civilisation tries to solve social and ecological problems by creating new and deeper ones in order to maintain its hegemony . The question of power and the question of the ecological problem are thus linked. Pollutant emissions, extractivism, and destruction serve the purpose of accumulating capital and power, so they are vital elements for those in power to maintain their position. Within this framework, it is important to analyse history from a sociological point of view, and to historicise sociology. What tools, then, should we use to analyse the processes that have seen the evolution of land use and care, industrialism and urbanisation? In these
processes, women’s practices and resistance have played a central role that needs to be understood. From these, and other, foundations we intend to question the tendency of future struggles and alternatives.
As part of this analysis, it is necessary to understand the layered consequences of the Industrial Revolution on history, on life, and on society, as well as on the meaning of industry, now emptied of its intrinsic creative character.
It is necessary to talk about the Industrial Revolution because from that moment agriculture, along with weaving, ceased to be the main mode of production, making industry reach its highest degree of capital accumulation, of profit gain. The Industrial Revolution thus marks an important turning point in the loss of society’s ecological consciousness: it is the moment when cities cease to be complementary elements to the countryside; in the Middle Ages, in fact, it was the importance of agriculture that determined the development of the craftsmanship sector in the city; the two realities with their respective social actors, in fact, were complementary to one another.
However, this is not just a matter of surplus production, which in fact already existed in earlier times, nor even just a revolution in economic terms, but something that has completely changed the structure of social, ethical, political, and ecological life. The two main political consequences we can trace are: industrial revolution paved the way for the development of the nation-state and initiated the second major global attack on society after colonialism: the imperialist process.
As the consequence of a long socio-historical accumulation, the Industrial Revolution marks the first time in history when energy became independent of human physical force and brought about the transition that led urban production to overtake and become more important than rural agricultural production. Urban society thus overtakes rural society, initiating the colonial dialectic between cities and villages, centre and periphery, marking the beginning of the dominance of the bourgeois class and the appearance of industrialists among society’s actors. At this stage, science begins its planned participation in production, becoming instrumental to profit maximization and complicit in capitalism attacks on nature and society. The implementation of analytical and positivist mentality to life has thus led to the moral decay of society, depriving it of its meaning and original essence, causing the radical weakening of our ecological consciousness. Proof of this is life in urban cities, where society and its values are commodified – from history to culture, to sacredness and nature, society is put at the service of the market. In the city, society loses its essence as a dimension that breeds and regenerates life. Indeed, the greatest threat embodied by industrialism consists in its anti-social nature. It is a theft and a massacre to all peoples and the whole earth.
This, however, should not lead us to think that urban and rural areas are part of two opposing environments or that the former arises as a space and phenomenon in contrast to the latter. On the contrary, it is a relationship of an entirely different kind: contrary to what the statist view suggests, the village represents the condition of possibility for the
existence of the city, which is born precisely from colonial expansion at the expense of the countryside and positioned as the center through its role of domination, exploitation, and production of violence, including epistemological violence. Its growth is cancerous, both in an imaginative sense because of the parasitic nature of its endless expansion and in the literal sense because of the consequences it entails for the environment and the health of living beings, human and non-human.
The way of understanding and interpreting reality to be developed must be ecological in itself. This means re-signifying the existence of society through the human and non- human relationships that it consists of, socialising and redefining the relationships between us and the Earth.
Ecological movements and struggles
The ecological movements of recent years have achieved many successes and shown great strength and determination. However, they have also had to face both the forces of the system and their own shortcomings; these two elements have prevented them from progressing and creating an ecological society. In this regard, some issues need to be discussed in depth today, as the development of the modern capitalist system is becoming more destructive by the day. At present, ecological movements in Europe feel the need to share experiences and develop strategies, long-term visions and alternatives that can show a common path.
In recent years, uprisings and movements have put on the agenda the urgency of imagining and living an alternative to the existing system. Envisioning the alternative is a compass for imagining which way to go, for designing strategies to get there, and thus for choosing tactics. Very often it is present in all struggles, but it is not explicit. And that is why it can be manipulated by the system.
In order to discuss this issue, it is important to discuss the motivations that drive ecological movements, starting with ourselves: the defence of the land and its resources, a historical course vibrant with values and principles, a way of living and interpreting reality. The current clash is above all a clash of ideologies and mentalities. Therefore, the transformation must also take place within ourselves. In fact, the problem of power and domination, over the living and the non-living, is intertwined with that of ecology.
Ecological struggles need to be reconnected with the broader spectrum of social struggles, against capital, against patriarchy, racism, and fascism. All these issues form a bundle that needs to be addressed holistically. Three main dimensions emerge from the collective experience: the re-discovery of a social, solidarity-based and inclusive morality that goes beyond the logic of individual profit; the conditions for society, in its plurality, to have a say in the decisions that affect its life and territory; the conditions for satisfying, producing and consuming on the basis of society’s needs rather than profit and without exploitation. Ecological struggles have often seen the need to reconnect urban and rural
areas and to develop eco-communities. This also means re-discovering certain capacities that the system takes away from us: the capacity for self-government, the capacity to organise social cooperation according to autonomous principles and objectives.
In the knowledge that there is a lack of forums where many different movements can come together to share their visions and strategies and find a common way forward, there are many issues we would like to discuss. With the idea that this platform is the first of a series, we would like to start with questions that allow us to share each other’s vision, the political issues that each struggle is facing and what common strategies we can build and what spaces we can create to continue the conversation after this workshop.
First we intend to collectively elaborate a vision of the main critical aspects and existing conflicts in the ecological field between the system and society in which Europe plays a leading role. Then we would like to trace ecological problems and a common history, or better, a herstory of the European territory of societies resistance against capitalist modernity, trying to get out of the gaze of a story written by the dominant male. Finally we would like to explore different ways of organizing to share tools and to find ways to connect struggles and resistance. Leaving us with a “compromiso” (as in Zapatistas conferences).