nonviolence.
However, there is a risk in becoming fixated with the problems of sabotage simply because it is perceived to be a form of violence, namely “violence against property.” This alone should not be the criterion for rejecting sabotage. Every method of nonviolent action needs to be assessed for its openness to participation, ends-means compatibility and susceptibility to cooption. The circumstances have a strong effect on how methods measure up according to these criteria. The key point is that assessment of all methods should be undertaken, without automatic acceptance or rejection in advance. Finally, to be compatible with nonviolence principles, this assessment needs to be a participatory one.
9. Environmental campaigns
The environmental ravages due to capitalism are well known. They include air and water pollution, land devastated by mining, clearing of land for cash crops, wiping out of species due to commercial exploitation or destruction of habitats, use of dangerous chemicals and radioactive materials, reduction of stratospheric ozone due to aerosol sprays and other products, and climate change due to burning fossil fuels.
The market system does not work well to handle environmental problems, partly because the costs of environmental impacts are seldom included in the costs of production.[1] For example, there is no simple market mechanism to make automobile manufacturers pay for the costs of ill health due to vehicle emissions, traffic accidents, use of land for roads, greenhouse warming or wars fought to ensure access to cheap oil. These costs are borne by members of the public and the environment. So it can be said that the profits are privatised (captured by owners and users) and the environmental and health costs are “socialised” (borne by society as a whole). In economic jargon, environmental costs are said to be “externalities,” namely things external to normal market processes.
There have been extended debates about the cause of environmental problems. One school of thought, whose most prominent exponent is Paul Ehrlich, says that overpopulation is the prime culprit.[2] Another perspective, championed by Barry Commoner, is that use of new technologies — selected and introduced within a capitalist framework — is the driving force behind environmental assaults: even with the same population, new chemicals, for example, cause more far-reaching impacts.[3] Much technological development is motivated by profits, so this perspective attributes much environmental degradation to capitalism.
Another debate is over the relative roles of capitalism and industrialism. State socialist economies such as the former Soviet Union caused enormous environmental problems, including highly polluting cars, wasteful industrial processes and devastating destruction of habitats such as Lake Baikal.[4] It is clear that state socialism can be at least as bad for the environment as capitalism, so it is reasonable to argue that the core problem is the cult of modern industry itself and not the economic system in which it grows.
There is also a debate about whether sound environmental practices are compatible with capitalism. In other words, within a capitalist system, is environmental sustainability possible?
While these debates are fascinating, it is not necessary to resolve them for the purposes of discussing nonviolence strategy against capitalism. It is sufficient to note that environmental goals and campaigns often challenge and constrain capitalist development. Indeed, environmentalism has been one of the major sources of challenge to capitalist prerogatives in the past several decades.
Opponents prevented the creation of a massive fleet of supersonic transport aircraft, limiting production to a few Concordes.
Campaigns have shut down most of the world’s whaling industry.
Forestry campaigners have opposed unsustainable and damaging forestry operations across the globe.
Anti-freeway protesters have challenged the expansion of road systems.
Opponents of nuclear power have stopped the nuclear industry across the world.
Campaigners have pushed for controls on production of carbon dioxide emissions to prevent global warming.
Local citizens have stopped innumerable commercial developments.
What is called the “environmental movement” is a complex and varied set of activists, sympathisers, organisations, campaigns and ideas, and might be better described in the plural as “environmental movements.” There are powerful international groups such as Greenpeace, numerous national environmental organisations and a host of local groups. There are full-time activists, occasional participants, financial supporters and passive sympathisers. There are individuals and groups that try to live lifestyles with low environmental impact. There is an enormous range of viewpoints among environmental campaigners.
Nonviolent action is widely used by environmentalists. This includes rallies, street theatre, symbolic actions such as dumping nonrecyclable containers on the steps of the manufacturer, blockading shipments of rainforest timbers, sitting in front of bulldozers and occupying development sites. More conventional techniques are also used by environmentalists, including writing letters, giving talks, preparing teaching materials, lobbying, advertising, drafting legislation, making submissions, and suing polluters through the courts. A few environmentalists use sabotage, such as putting spikes in trees that are a target of logging, but always with a strong commitment to avoid harm to humans.
In the immense diversity within the environmental movement, there are some anticapitalist aspects, quite a few that provide no threat to capitalism and some that support capitalism. In the early years of the modern movement, environmental concerns were often portrayed as a middle-class preoccupation, for example to stop a factory or road that would disturb the lifestyle of affluent suburbanites. Left-wing analysts and parties at first derided environmentalism as contrary to the interests of the working class: industry and jobs were considered more important than the side-effects of industrial development.[5] Belching smokestacks were once seen as a sign of progress. As the years passed, through, left-wing groups joined the environmental bandwagon, seeing it as a means to challenge capitalism. However, as noted earlier, socialist industrialism is not necessarily any better environmentally.
Unlike a traditional left approach, a nonviolence strategy cannot rely on the power of the state to challenge capital, and likewise it cannot rely on state power to solve environmental problems. In order to assess environmental campaigns from a nonviolence perspective, it is helpful to focus on particular environmental issues. Here, three areas are examined: pesticides, nuclear power and local antidevelopment campaigns.
Pesticides
Rachel Carson’s famous book
Manufacture and sale of pesticides is a very large industry. A number of giant multinational chemical corporations, such as Monsanto, produce the bulk of pesticides used worldwide. To greatly reduce pesticide use would be to reduce profits. Hence campaigns against pesticides are definitely a challenge to a significant fraction of capital.
Critics of pesticides, or of their excessive and inappropriate use, have used a variety of methods, including
