Capital & Class

http://cnc.sagepub.com/ Capital Against Nature: James O'Connor's theory of the second contradiction of capitalism
Martin Spence Capital & Class 2000 24: 81 DOI: 10.1177/030981680007200105 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/24/3/81

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James OConnors theory of the second contradiction of capitalism is a pioneering attempt to reconcile Marxism with environmentalism, and other social movements. This article analyses OConnors theory, and nds both serious aws and startling innovations. While rejecting the overall frame work of a second contradiction as proposed by OConnor, it seeks to combine his most valuable insiqhts with a renewed emphasis on class, in order to develop an alternative approach to a Marxist understanding of environmental crisis.

Capital Against Nature

James OConnors theory of the second contradiction of capitalism
Martin Spence
1. Introduction James OConnor has played a major role in the red-green debate which has run for the past decade and more. His contributions, in which he has patiently and persistently argued for the application of Marxist analysis to the environmental crisis, have undoubtedly raised the quality of a dialogue which all too frequendy resorts to name-calling. His main achievement has been to open up a new approach to the increasingly sterile debate on natural limits. This is an issue fraught with danger for anyone working in the Marxist tradition, for mention of natural limits immediately conjures up the spectre of Malthus, and Marxs antipathy to Malthusianism is well known. But it serves little purpose to ee Malthusianism, only to end up endorsing by implication the equally reactionary notion that the natural environment can (and should?) be totally subordinated to human goals: to avoid lining up with Malthus only to end up standing instead alongside Lysenko. If the question of natural limits forces us to choose between two such ridiculous answers, then there must be something wrong with the question.

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OConnor poses a different and more useful question, by developing the Marxist concept of contradiction to put ecological crisis, resource depletion and scarcity into context as historically specic outcomes of historically-specic patterns of capitalist development. And he goes on to propose a new theoretical framework for this, arguing that environmental crisis is the manifestation of a second contradiction of capitalism, a new contradiction in which capital accumulation creates new barriers to its own further development. This paper starts (sections 2 to 4) by examining OConnors theory of a second contradiction of capitalism. It nds that it is unsatisfactory, and in certain respects deeply awed, but despite this it throws up valuable new analytical categories. The paper then goes on (sections 5 and 6) to propose an alternative approach to understanding capitals impact on the natural environment. This approach makes use of some of OConnors analytical tools, but within an overall framework rooted in the commodity form of labour power, and the continued relevance of class.

2. The rst contradiction OConnor starts from a position squarely in the Marxist tradition, seeing crisis and contradiction at the very heart of the capitalist mode of production. He repeatedly describes capitalism as both crisis-ridden and crisis-dependent (OConnor, 1996: 203; 1998c: 182), meaning that in the course of its normal functioning it generates barriers to its own further development; and these barriers manifest themselves as crises; and these crises have the potential either to undermine or to strengthen capitalism as a whole, depending on the circumstances at the time, on political action and contingency. He recognises that for Marxists, capitalism is characterised not simply by contradiction in general, but by a very specific internal contradiction:
The point of departure of the traditional Marxist theory of economic crisis and the transition to socialism is the contradiction between capitalist productive forces and production relations (OConnor, 1996: 200).

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For OConnor, this is the rst contradiction, whose essential characteristics are that:

it is internal to the capitalist system; it manifests itself in a tendency towards overproduction and a consequent crisis of realisation; it calls into existence the organised working class as the key agency of progressive social change (OConnor, 1996).

In keeping with his emphasis on political action and contingency, the picture OConnor paints here is not of some grand, trans-historical logic inexorably working itself out. On the contrary, there is much scope for messy, pragmatic compromises to bed down and reproduce themselves. In his early writings on this theme he uses the metaphor of a loose t between productive forces and production relations to make the point:
any given set of capitalist technologies and work relations is consistent with more than one set of production relations, and any given set of production relations is consistent with more than one set of technologies and work relations. The fit between relations and forces is thus assumed to be quite loose and exible. (OConnor, 1996: 205).

Thus in favourable historical periods, the labour movement has pushed capital into conceding more social forms of production relations such as collective bargaining (OConnor, 1996), or a shift in the balance of exploitation away from absolute surplus value and towards relative surplus value (OConnor, 1998d). Such gains are real and important: they create new circumstances and experiences which may help to put socialist solutions on the agenda. For the purposes of developing his argument, OConnor works with a conventional understanding of the forces of production and social relations of production. He uses productive forces to refer essentially to production technologies; and production relations to refer to private property, wage labour, and other supportive institutional forms. But at the same time his metaphor of a loose fit indicates that he sees the boundary between them as relatively soft and porous. And he

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insists that one key factor in particularhuman co-operation enters into both of them (OConnor, 1996; 1999). This is a crucial element of his argument, because it opens up the scope of class struggle to include the productive forces; it politicises questions of technological purpose, design and implementation. Overall, OConnor paints a picture of capitalism riven in its deepest being by the rst contradiction between the forces of production and the social relations of production, a contradiction which manifests itself in the form of successive crises of realisation. Whether such crises resolve themselves as fundamental threats to the capitalist order, or as means of disciplining and renewing it, is an open question, to be determined politically. Over time working class activity and interventions have won significant gains. To some extent this has been helped by the loose t between technological forms and modes of productive co-operation on the one hand, and broader social relations and institutions on the other. But the same loose t also gives capital considerable leeway to absorb labours challenges and turn them to advantage.

3. The second contradiction OConnors theory of a second contradiction of capitalism is developed by analogy from his version of the first contradiction. He argues that the ecological crisis marks a point in the develop ment of capitalism at which new barriers to capital accumulation and new forms of systemic crisisin other words a new contradictionappear. The characteristics of this new, second contradiction can be highlighted by comparison with the three dening characteristics of the rst contradiction which were summarised above:

the second contradiction is partly internal, and partly external, to the capitalist system; it manifests itself not in a tendency to overproduction and a crisis of realisation, but in a tendency to under production and a crisis of liquidity or shortage of capital; it calls into existence the new social movements as the key agency of progressive social change (OConnor 1991; 1996).

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How does this second contradiction arise? What are the contradictory categories? Clearly they cannot be the forces of production, or the social relations of production, whose relationship to each other is already defined within the framework of the rst contradiction. It follows that in order for a second contradiction to exist, a new fundamental category of analysis is required. This new category is the conditions of production or production conditions. OConnor states that Marx defined three kinds of production condition. Firstly, there are the communal general conditions of production, for example means of communication'a concept which OConnor broadens to encompass not only transport and communication systems but social capital, urban space and infrastructure in general. Secondly, there is the labour power of workers defined as the personal conditions of production. And thirdly, there are external physical conditions or the natural elements, usually referred to by OConnor as external nature (OConnor, 1996: 200). The common defining characteristic of these three conditions of production is that each of them is not produced as a commodity according to the law of value or market forces, butis treated by capital as if it were a commodity (OConnor, 1998f: 307). This category conditions of production is fundamental to OConnors case. If it doesnt stand up, then the whole edice of his second contradiction theory collapses around it. The category is therefore examined in some detail in section 4 below. But for now we will give it the benet of the doubt. Taken as a whole, OConnors second contradiction theory is an attempt to explain the production of scarcityor rather, the production of specically capitalist scarcity (OConnor, 1996: 198). It expresses a contradictory relationship between capitalist productive forces and production relations on the one hand, and production conditions on the other:
the combined power of capitalist production relations and productive forces self-destruct by impairing or destroying rather than reproducing their own conditions (OConnor, 1996: 206).

The combined expression of productive forces and production relations is nothing other than the process of capital

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accumulation itself, so in effect OConnors second contradiction is a contradiction between capital accumulation, and production conditions. It is driven by individual capitals seeking to shore up their protability through cost-cutting which degrades, or fails to maintain, the material and social conditions of their own production. But these conditions are common to capitalist production as a whole, so capital-in-general is confronted with higher costs further down the road, in order to repair the damage done to the shared conditions of production by the shorttermism of individual capitals (OConnor, 1998d). OConnor argues that this process can be seen at work in all three production conditions. In the case of urban space and infrastructure he points to crises and conflicts over public transport, public safety and policing, planning and development. In the case of human labour power his emphasis is not on labour power as a commodity, but on peoples capacity for useful labour, their physical and mental integrity and well-being, and he highlights such issues as threats to public health and to workplace health and safety. In the case of external nature he points to the appearance of articially-induced natural barriers to production such as loss of soil fertility due to over-use of pesticides, soil erosion due to deforestation, ozone layer depletion due to CFCs, global warming and climate change due to greenhouse gas pollution, and so on (OConnor, 1996). OConnor also argues that, because these various conditions of production are not produced as commodities, the State is necessarily involved in their supply and regulation. In fact he sees the State predominantly as an instrument for regulating the conditions of production:
Excepting branches of the state regulating money and certain aspects of foreign relations every state agency and political party agenda may be regarded as a kind of interface between capital and nature (including human beings and space) (OConnor, 1996: 206).

Finally, he argues that the second contradiction throws up a new agency of progressive social change in the form of new social movements, whose activities tend to defend or restore the integrity of the conditions of production. In fact OConnor sees a one-to-one connection between different conditions of production, and different types of social movement:

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new social movements seem to have an objective referent in production conditions: ecology and environmentalism in natural conditions; urban movements of the type discussed by Manuel Castells and many others in the 1970s and early

1980s in urban infrastructure and space; and movements such as feminism that pertain to (among other things) the definition of labour power, the politics of the body, the distribution of child care labour in the home, and similar issues, in the personal conditions of production. (OConnor, 1998f: 308). OConnor therefore does not regard the working class as the sole or even dominant agency of progressive social change in modern capitalism. On the contrary, he regards it as an agency associated specifically with the first contradiction, and with a traditional process of socialist construction based on the legacy of capitalist productive forces and production relations. With the second contradiction, however, comes a new agency of social change in the form of the new social movements, associated with a new project of socialist reconstruction of the conditions of production. For OConnor, two different but parallel paths to socialism may now exist, each associated with a distinct contradiction of capitalism and a distinct social agency (OConnor, 1996). It is clear from this brief sketch that OConnors second contradiction theory does provide an explanatory framework for many aspects of the ecological crisis, and that it makes use of Marxist categories and concepts. However it also makes some startling theoretical innovations: firstly, by proposing the conditions of production as a fundamental new category of analysis; secondly, by posing a new contradiction which drives the forces of production and the social relations of production, whose own contradictory relationship is part of the common ground of Marxism, into a sort of theoretical shotgun wedding; and thirdly, by proposing the emergence of a new, non-class based agency of progressive social change.

4. Conditions of production The category conditions of production is fundamental to OConnors approach, and as we have seen, in setting out his

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second contradiction theory he is adamant that the category was used by Marx, claiming that Marx defined three kinds of production conditions (OConnor, 1996: 200). In the same seminal piece he goes on to say:
I use conditions of production because I want to reconstruct the problem using Marxs own terminology (OConnor,1996: 218, note 12).

How far can this be justied? Did Marx use and recognise the category of conditions of production in the way that OConnor defines it? The question matters only because of OConnors insistence that he did, and because this insistence allows OConnor to present his second contradiction theory as simply an elaboration of established Marxist categories. What is at stake here is not the legitimacy of the concept of production conditions, but the relationship of OConnors theory to Marxism. OConnors claim that urban space and infrastructure constitute a condition of production is supported by a quotation from the Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (the Grundrisse), written in 1857-8, in which Marx refers to roads and canals as general conditions of production (OConnor, 1996: 218, note 14). His claim that external nature is a condition of production is supported by quotations from Theories of Surplus Value, written in 1862-3, in which Marx refers to the natural fertility of the land as the precondition for absolute surplus value (OConnor, 1996: 217, note 5); and from Capital volume I, published in 1867, in which Marx refers to the soil and the labourer as the original sources of all wealth (OConnor, 1998b: 156, note 11). And his claim that human labour power is a condition of production is supported by a quotation from the Critique of the Gotha Programme, published in 1875, in which Marx refers to labour power as the personal condition of production (OConnor, 1996: 200). In other words, OConnors assertion that Marx recognised and used conditions of production as an analytical category is maintained by picking up on odd uses of the phrase, from different works, scattered across Marxs prodigious output over a period of nearly 20 years. It is certainly true that Marx used the phrasein fact he used it on many more occasions than those highlighted by

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OConnor. But much more important than his mere use of the phrase is the fact that he invested it with a variety of different meanings. In The German Ideology (Marx, 1998a: 66), The Communist Manifesto (Marx, 1998b: 16), and Capital volume III (Marx, K., 1998c: XV-341) he used it roughlyas a synonym for the social relations of production. In The Eighteenth Brumaire (Marx, K., 1998d: 19), and the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx, K., 1998e: 8) it carries a meaning closer to the forces of production. In the Critique of the Gotha Programmein the very same passage referred to by OConnorthe phrase is used to refer to the means or instruments of production (Marx, 1998f: 21). And in Value Price and Profit (Marx, 1998g: 35) Marx uses it to refer to a mode of production, capitalist or otherwise. The only sensible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that in the course of his work Marx used the phrase conditions of production to carry a variety of meanings, dependent on context. There is no evidence that he used it as an analytical category with the precision of meaning that OConnor now ascribes to it. The truth is that OConnors concept is primarily derived from sources other than Marx. Karl Polanyi is one such source. OConnor is quite open about his theoretical debt here, and sometimes presents his own work as a fusion of Marx and Polanyi. But in fact he leans overwhelmingly on Polanyi, whose argument that land and labour are fictitious commodities looks like a direct inspiration for OConnors definition of production conditions (Stahel, 1999: 109). In fact OConnor himself admitted, five years after first framing his second contradiction theory, that:
Marx used the concept of conditions of production in different and inconsistent ways; he never dreamed that the concept would or could be used in the way that I use it in this chapter; and no-one could have used the concept in this way until the appearance of Karl Polanyis The Great Transformation (OConnor, 1998d: 252, note 7).

But this admission is tucked away in a footnote to one of his many essays on the subject. It is possible that Gunnar Skirbekk was another source of inspiration. Although OConnor does not acknowledge him, Skirbekks 1974 essay discussed natural conditions of

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production and infrastructure in ways which certainly pregure aspects of OConnors argument (Skirbekk, 1996). OConnors invocation and refinement of the category of conditions of production is therefore primarily his own work, inspired certainly by Polanyi, and perhaps by Skirbekk. It is not an elaboration of a category used by Marx, and it is unclear quite why OConnor felt it necessary to suggest that it was: Marxs failure to use the concept does not after all make it illegitimate. What this means is that the re]ationship of second contradiction theory to Marxism needs to be tested, rather than merely asserted. And it means that the novelty of the concept of production conditions needs to be acknowledged, and its utility interrogated. The following three sub-sections undertake this interrogation. Each exarnines one of OConnors three conditions of production, to establish whether it meets his own denition of the term, and whether it appears to be associated with a new contradiction of capitalism. 4.1. Urban space and infrastructure as a condition of production Throughout his writings on the second contradiction, OConnor treats the elements of urban space and infrastructure as if they self evidently meet his definition of conditions of production: that they are not produced as commodities, but are treated by capital as if they were commodities. To start by establishing points of agreement: it is true and uncontroversial that the global economy faces widespread problems within its urban and industrial infrastructure. Two examples are inadequate access to public transport in many capitalist metropolitan areas, and inadequate access to clean water in much of Africa and Asia. It is also true and uncontroversial that both these situations arise from lack of investment, in line with OConnors argument that the second contradiction manifests itself in crises of under-production or shortage of capital. But OConnors claim, that the constituent elements of urban and industrial infrastructure are not produced as commodities, is incorrect. On the contrary, public transport services, water supply systems, roads, railways, canals, airports, power stations, electricity supply systems, gas supply systems, and telecommunications networks, very often are produced as commodities.

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This is admittedly a complex area, but the complexities are real and need to be faced, whereas OConnors approach simply begs all the important questions. Significantly, he quotes the Grundrisse in his support, so it may be worthwhile going back to that source to revisit Marxs argument. In the Chapter on Capital, Marx spends some time ruminating on the means of transport and communication. He concentrates on roads. On the one hand, he argues, as capitalism develops and as production is driven increasingly by exchange value, it needs effective transport and communication systems in order to deliver its products to market, rapidly and in bulk. On the other hand, the labour invested in creating and maintaining these means of transport and communication is not directly productive from capitals point of view: it is a drain on the common surplus product. From this point Marx goes on to discuss the different circumstances in which the task of roadbuilding might be undertaken by the State, or by capital, or might effectivelybe shared between them. Underlying it all is the fundamental principle that: Capital undertakes only advantageous undertakings, advantageous in its (own) sense (Marx, 1973: 531). In our own era, the full subtlety of Marxs observations becomes clear as soon as we take stock of the range of forms of State ownership, privatisation and semi-privatisation; robust and light-touch regulatory regimes; and public-private partnerships and finance initiatives; which characterise transport, the utilities, and communications systems. But despite this complexity, the brute fact remains that within these sectors, private capital finds and creates opportunities for protable investment, investment whose logic is dictated by the law of value and market forces. In fact much of the success of the neo-liberal offensive of the past quarter century can be attributed to the tortured ingenuity with which capital has attacked precisely these sectors to create precisely these opportunities. To sum up, it is undeniable that there are serious local problems, even local crises, of urban space and infrastructure; and that lack of investment lies at the heart of this. But OConnors broad-brush concept of conditions of production fails to shed light on the matter. A more subtle approach is required, as suggested by Marxs line of argument in the Grundrisse. It follows that it is not necessary to invoke a second

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contradiction of capitalism in order to explain these problems and crises. On the contrary, we are dealing here with the rst contradiction, the contradiction between the forces of production and the social relations of production, or between social production and private appropriation. The explanation for lack of investment in public transport in London, or clean water in much of sub-Saharan Africa, lies in the fact that capital undertakes only advantageous undertakings, and the parameters for calculating its advantage are set by neo-liberal structures of State power and global nance. 4.2. Labour power as a condition of production Unlike urban space and infrastructure, labour power clearly does meet OConnors denition of a condition of production. Labour powerin its manifestation as a capacity for useful workis not produced as a commodity, but emerges from the interaction of evolutionary, biological and cultural processes; and yet it is taken up by capital and transformed into a commodity. According to second contradiction theory, it is therefore caught in a contradictory relationship with the process of capital accumulation, which throws up barriers to the reproduction of labour power. Capitalism is not the first or only mode of production to produce or exchange commodities. But it is unique in rooting itself in the commodity of labour power, which is the institutional expression of abstract labour, which in turn is the substance of value. Labour under capitalism therefore has a two-fold character. As in other modes of production it is a concrete useful activity, but as labour power it is also a commodity for sale, a capacity to perform work, vested in human beings who are formally and legally free, but whose nominal freedom is constrained by the fact that they have no choice but to sell this commodity in order to acquire the essentials of life. What then can OConnor mean when he argues that capital accumulation throws up barriers to the reproduction of this commodity? In principle, he might mean that accumulation is somehow undermining the commodity status of labour power. For instance, this might happen if the pattern of capital accumulation generated large numbers of people with independent access to the essentials of life, thus freeing them

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from the need to sell their labour power. This is an option for small numbers of people, including rentiers and criminals, but a whole new contradiction of capitalism would require it to be widespread, expressed as a collective abstention by millions of otherwise fit, healthy, skilled individuals on a scale that undermines the effective functioning of the labour market. No such collective abstention has occurred or is in prospect. On the contrary, the neo-liberal offensive of recent years has had precisely the opposite effect, by undermining structures of permanent employment and substituting various forms of insecure, casual, freelance and contract labour. Many workers are now more vulnerable, weaker in terms of their bargaining power with employers, their labour power more thoroughly commodified, than ever before. Far from undermining or calling into question the commodity form of labour power, neoliberalism has redened and re-imposed it with a vengeance. However, OConnors discussion of labour power focuses not on its commodity-status, but on its physiological and social manifestation in living human beings. In his view, the second contradiction impacts upon labour power via public health and access to healthcare; threats to health and safety at work; the politics of gender and the body, tensions around paid and unpaid work and the division of labour; and social and cultural conditioning including work discipline (OConnor, 1996: 200201; 217, note 6). This is a slippery set of issues. Clearly these are real and important questions, which are actively and sometimes violently contested, but a sense of proportion is required. It is one thing to point out that struggles are under way around health care, workplace safety, gender, the family, and the boundaries of paid and unpaid work. It is another, quite different thing to argue that these add up to a new contradiction of capitalism, that their logic is to thwart or block the reproduction of labour power to the point where this becomes a systemic problem for capital. To take health as an example: it is true that in advanced capitalist countries, the level of public consciousness of health issuesincluding environmental health, workplace safety, food safety, health service provision, transport safetyhas never been higher. But a high level of public consciousness does not amount to a new contradiction of capitalism. Capitalism has always undermined the health and safety of workers and the general public: Dickens, Engels, Marx, and Mayhew described

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in vivid detail the appalling living and working conditions of labourers in nineteenth century England, whose lives were blighted by their employers pursuit of surplus value. But Marx also acknowledged that the Victorian State sought to prevent certain abuses, and took action to protect public health and welfare. In our own times, despite regular health scares, the bald statistical fact is that public health and longevity in the UK and other leading capitalist countries continues to improve. To sum up: it is true that health issues have a high public prole; and it is true that there is a constant, never-ending debate on resources and priorities in public safety and public heath; but it is not true that the current era of capitalist development has generated a health-related contradiction around the availability of labour power. At a global level, in fact, the opposite is true. At a global level, capitalism creates not labour shortages, but mass unemployment and poverty on a staggering scale. Global unemployment stands at around one billion. Whole countries and regions of what used to be called the Third World including much of the continent of Africahave effectively been written off by capital as offering little or no prospect for protable investment. One result is that poor people, excluded from the capitalist labour market and cash economy, take environmentally-damaging action to acquire the resources they need directly from the natural environment. Unemployment and poverty are significant factors in the destruction of the worlds rainforests, in deforestation and soil erosion, in pressure on water supplies. This is indeed a crisis, and it is indeed associated with a dysfunctional global labour marketbut it is not the crisis indicated by OConnor.

4.3. External nature as a condition of production This brings us to the third of OConnors conditions of production: external nature, the natural environment and natural processes. Certain aspects of external nature do fulfil OConnors denition of conditions of production. The soil, for instance, is not produced as a commodity, and yet it is treated by capital as if it were a commodity. Soil itselfthe complex, living, organic mass which is a prerequisite for plant growth and therefore also

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for terrestrial animal lifeis produced and reproduced as part of a natural cycle of biological growth and decay. But capitalist agriculture imposes the commodity form upon the soil in various ways. It redenes it as land, a form of private property capable of beingbought, sold and rented for use. And it subordinates the soils natural fertility to the aim of producing another commodity, a crop for sale, by subjecting it to a series of interventionsthe intensive application of human labour, the addition of herbicides, pesticides, etc.which cut across its own cycles and rhythms and force it to yield larger and more regular crops than would otherwise be the case. This may work for a time, but ultimately it yields diminishing returns as the soil becomes depleted, and as weeds and pests adapt and evolve to resist the chemical interventions deployed against them. The environmental impact of capitalist agriculture upon the soil is discussed by Marx in the rst volume of Capital (Marx, 1998h: 724-7). He described the ways in which capitalist agriculture undermines soil fertility, and thus undermines its own viabilitybut as OConnor points out, while describing the contradiction very eloquently, Marx failed to recognise it as a contradiction. He did not perceive that soil depletion is in effect a natural barrier to accumulation, a second, capitalised nature called into existence by capital itself (OConnor, 1996: 199). This notion of second nature is central to OConnors argument. Second nature refers to aspects of the natural environment, aspects of living organisms or natural processes, which have been transformed by capitalist productive activity. But this is not a one-way movement in which humans simply act upon or master nature. It is a dynamic movement in which two unfolding systems act upon each other; and it is potentially contradictory for capitalism because the end result of the movement may be a natural barrier to capital accumulation, called into being by capital but inimical to it. In effect, second nature transformations are an interface, a zone of tension and potential conflict, between capitalist productive activity, and primary-nature processes which have their own movements and rhythms but which are beyond human reach. Global warming is a familiar example of capitalist second nature. Here, capitalist production has generated the sudden and massive eruption of greenhouse gases, which then encounter primary-nature processes encompassing the atmosphere, solar radiation, the planets geology, ocean

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currents, and the presence of organic life (Lovelock, 1979), and the interaction between the two is the second-nature phenomenon of global warming. This perspective allows us to grasp global warming not as a breach of some quantitative natural limit, but as a zone of second-nature tension between two dynamic systems, between capitalist production and primary-nature processes. Natural barriers are not immediately thrown up every time capitalist productive activity impacts upon the natural environment. The phenomenon of urban wildlife demonstrates that, in a relatively short time, some plant and animal species can adapt even to the artificial environment of capitalist metropoles. In all such cases, however, we must allow for the intrinsically complex and open-ended character of evolutionary change. The fact that a particular intrusion into the natural environment has not so far provoked the appearance of a natural barrier, does not mean that it never will. OConnors concept of second nature is therefore rich and persuasive. It helps us to grasp real contradictory movements, and reveals the interaction between human society and the natural environment as a dynamic and reciprocal process. But as OConnor himself points out, this contradiction is not restricted to capitalism. Other societies, other modes of production, have given rise to their own forms of second nature. He states:- Slave labour gives you one kind of nature, serf labour another kind, and he illustrates the point by reference to patterns of agriculture in the Roman Empire and feudal Europe (OConnor, 1998a: 26-7). Non-capitalist modes of production are perfectly capable of creating their own destructive second natures, their own environmental contradictions. In the case of Rome, the protracted process of environmental collapse exacerbated the political and military collapse: deforestation and overgrazing in Italy led to soil erosion and food shortages, which together with acute urban pollution encouraged epidemics, general ill health, and population decline. The Eastern Empire however had access to the rich soil of Egypt, and to large productive populations in Asia Minor. Thus Constantinople/Byzantium survived while Rome fell (Hughes, 1975, 1999; OConnor, 1996). In Central America the Maya established a proto-urban society in semi-tropical jungle on the improbably narrow

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economic base of slash-and-burn agriculture. Slash-and-burn is a viable mode of subsistence where relatively small groups occupy relatively large ranges, but it was incapable of supporting Mayan society, densely populated and with a high environmental impact. The Maya overloaded their eco-system, causing deforestation, soil depletion, water scarcity, and perhaps even local or regional climate change (Harris, 1978; Hughes, 1999; OConnor, 1998d). Non-capitalist environmental barriers and contradictions are evident in our own era too. In its own ways and according to its own laws of motion, the USSR acted upon and transformed nature with a vengeance. The Soviet social formation had an inherent tendency to stagnate, and relied for its internal dynamism largely upon the energy of the political bureaucracy (Furedi, 1986)but this in itself encouraged the conception, and sometimes the realisation, of Promethean projects of environmental transformation. Some of thesesuch as the diversion of an entire river system from the Arctic to Central Asiathankfully remained pipe-dreams. Otherssuch as imposing an irrigation-based cotton monoculture in Uzbekistan and neighbouring areaswere implemented. Water from the two great rivers feeding the Aral Sea was diverted for irrigation. Consequently, the Sea started to shrink. The local climate became more extreme, with hotter summers and colder winters. The shing industry died as sh went extinct, and former ports found themselves miles from the retreating Sea. The drying-up of the Sea bed also released toxic dust and fertiliser residues into the air. As a result of all these interacting factorsthe death of the Sea, unemployment, health problems from airborne pollution, the deteriorating climatede-population set in. Socially, economically, and environmentally, the entire region is dying, at enormous cost to the post-Soviet republics affected. To sum up, OConnor is correct to argue that aspects of external nature may be pulled into genuinely contradictory relationships with human productive activities; and his concept of second nature gives us a valuable tool for grasping these contradictions. But second nature is not unique to capitalism: other modes of production have given rise to their own forms of second nature, which may be quite capable of throwing up barriers to the reproduction of the natural production conditions of those non-capitalist societies. In other words, while OConnor may have identified a contradiction which is

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new in the sense that it has only recently been theorised, it is not new in historical terms. On the contrary, in one form or another, it has been present for thousands of years. We therefore return to the original question: what is it about capitalism which generates ecological crisis on the scale that we see today? Some of OConnors analytical tools and categories are invaluable in tackling this questionincluding the notion of conditions of production when applied to the natural environment, and the concept of second nature. In the next two sections I will sketch out a new approach to this question, making use of these tools, but applying them within a broader framework which places much more emphasis on the commodity form in general, the commodity of labour power in particular, and the continued relevance of class.

5. The magic of markets: capitalism and the natural environment There is a common view among environmentalists, including some green socialists, that capitalisms destructive impact on nature is a consequence of treating natural resources as free goods, and the broader environment as a bottomless sink for waste and pollution. For them, the central problem is that the natural environment falls outside the sphere of capital logic, outside the sphere of monetary prices. OConnor takes a diametrically opposed position. He argues that the degradation of the natural environment ows precisely from the imposition of capital logic, and that what is unique about capitalism is that it commodies and valorizes nature as it degrades it (OConnor, 1998d: 244). This is a much more convincing and fruitful approach, which opens the way for us to focus on the inner dynamic of competitive capital accumulation, the crucial commodity of labour power, and the imposition of private property rights upon the natural environment. We have already seen that the defining feature of the capitalist mode of production is its reliance upon abstract labour, expressed institutionally in the commodity form of labour power. By making a commodity of labour power, capital is able to mobilise labourboth living and deadon a scale unknown to other modes of production. Consequently the

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sheer scale of its impact on the natural environmentits consumption of scarce resources, its generation of waste and pollutionis also unprecedented. This happens not because individual capitals positively set out to degrade the environment: it happens because capitals primary focus is not on its own concrete activity at all, but on that activity as a means to the end of realising surplus value in a constantly-changing and uncertain world. Thus Benton misses the point entirely when he criticises Marx for over-emphasising the transformative character of the manufacturing labour process, and for paying insufficient attention to regulatory labour such as agricultural labour, which (he says) regulates the natural rhythms and dynamics of soil and crops (Benton, 1996a). All of Bentons attention here is upon labour as a concrete activity, a combination of knowledge, skill and experience applied to a real task. But this is not capitals perspective, and by ignoring capitals perspective Benton fails to see that his distinction between transformative and regulatory labour is illusory. For when capitalist farmers mobilise commodified labour power, they are driven by the market to make it every bit as transfommative as industrial labour. And this is precisely where OConnors contradiction cuts in, as the market-driven imperative to make agriculture into a protable industrial process generates multiple secondnature contradictions. In addition to its mobilisation of commodified labour power, and its imposition of private property rights and legal boundaries upon nature, there is also a third way in which capital imposes the commodity form, and this is through the imposition of commodity-time, or market-time, upon nature (see Stahel, 1999). To retum to the example of agriculture: capitalist farmers, as farmers, know perfectly well that the soils fertility, its capacity to x nitrogen and to maintain its supply of essential minerals, requires time for complex interactions to occur between millions of microbes and other organisms. But capitalist farmers, as capitalists, also know that the market has its own cycles, quite disconnected from natural cydes, and typically of much shorter duration. The market dictates that time is money, that the soil is a means to the end of surplus value, and that its yieldat least within conventional and foreseeable accounting periodswill be maximised by intensive farming. Capitalist farmers who ignore the dictates of the

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market will go bankrupt and cease to be farmers at all. So they prioritise delivering their crops to market in sufficient bulk and at the right time to get a good price, despite the fact that this may cut across the soils need simply to be allowed time to replenish its fertility. In our own era, the advent of genetically modied organisms (GMOs) in agriculture is capitals latest attempt to impose upon nature both commodity-time, and private property rights, in a secure and effective way. Bio-technology corporations already have rights in the raw materials of agri-business: fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, etc. These proprietary applications have traditionally been protected by restricting knowledge of their underlying chemical formulae and ingredients. With GMOs, property rights can be consolidated and protected even more effectively from challenge or theft by inscribing them below the chemical level, at the genetic level. This greater protection is rooted in the sheer cost and complexity of genetic modication, and the enormous difficulty of reading back the precise nature of the modication from the nal product. GMOs tighten the commoditys grip upon nature by inscribing property rights in genetic codes and sequences. Second nature here is created in the form of genetic sequences that do not exist in nature. The great unanswered question which underlies the GMO debate is whether this particular form of second nature will prove to be a contradiction, throwing up barriers to the reproduction of natural conditions of production. The risk that they will generate second-nature contradictions is high, because GMOs represent an intervention, an inscription of private property rights, not just in the process of growth and reproduction within a particular species, but in the primary nature process of evolution and speciation. Whether we accept a gradualist model of evolutionary change (Dawkins, 1988) or a model of punctuated equilibrium (Gould, 1990), the time scales involved in the emergence of new species are measured in hundreds or thousands of generations, which for many species means hundreds of thousands, or millions, of years. Within this evolutionary time scale, a new species or variation of a species arises as a result of a series of genetic changes, the manifestations of which are tested by countless interactions with an environment which is itself constantly changing, over many generations. This is not a goal-

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oriented process; survival is not assured; many variations are notviable and simply disappear. And even those new species that do persist often only do so for as long as their environment remains relatively stable. With GMOs, however, the evolutionary feedback of genetic change and relentless environmental testing over many generations is short-circuited in the interests of capital. Instead, after abrupt trials in artificial conditions designed mainly to satisfy or by-pass regulatory authorities, radically re-engineered organisms are imposed wholesale on the natural environment. In the nature of things, no-one can know what environmental effects this radically new form of second nature may have. In the nature of things, time-limited tests cannot establish whether, over many generations, articially engineered genetic sequences may be transmitted from proprietary GM organisms to other organisms belonging to related or unrelated species, and if so, with what consequences for those species, or for the eco-systems in which they participate, or for human health and welfare. To sum up, capitals relationship with nature is characterised rstly, by its capacity for mobilisation of commodied labour power, so that the sheer scope and scale of its impact on the environment is unprecedented; secondly, by its imposition upon nature of private property rights and legal boundaries; and thirdly, by its imposition of commodity-time or market-time upon natural cycles and rhythms. These three aspects of capitals impact upon nature all contribute to the generation of second-nature contradictions as described by OConnor. But there is yet a further twist, because insofar as capital is prepared to contemplate solutions to the environmental problems and contradictions which it generates, these solutions too are increasingly based on creating new commodities and new property rights. Of course, these market based solutions are supported by many who subscribe to the free goods/bottomless sink analysis:
(Many) natural environmental and infrastructure conditions of production are not treated by capital as commodities, but rather as free goods. The main strategy of neo-classical environmental economics, and of a large part of the reform wing of the environmental movement, is precisely to require capital to treat these conditions as commodities, to internalise them as part of its cost structure. (Benton 1 996b: 191 ) .

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One prominent example of this trend is the creation of a market in pollution permits as a means of tackling global warming. Such a market was set up at the United Nations environmental summit at Kyoto in 1997 although it later emerged that, if the summit had decided against it, seven leading capitalist countries including the USA, UK, and Germany would have gone ahead anyway. The new commodity conjured up by the Kyoto system is a tradable right to pollute, and the system itself is based on the market in sulphur dioxide emission permits established by traders in Chicago (Financial Times 21/10/1997). US Vice President Al Gore greeted the Kyoto decision as a breakthrough in tackling environmental crisis by mobilising the magic of markets (Financial Times 10/12/1997). The Kyoto system is a limited market intended to tackle a singlethough large-scaleenvironmental problem. However it opens the door to a more thorough-going project whereby a price would be placed on nature itself. Thus Professor Jane Lubchenko has called for a market valuation to be placed on the services provided by the planets eco-systemsservices such as water purification through the hydrological cycle, waste recycling through biological degradation, soil fertility, and insect pollination. For what its worth, the value of such services has been estimated at $30 trillion or 18,600 billion (Financial Times 17/2/1997). However the line taken by OConnorand by this paper is that far from being the result of imperfect or insufficiently extensive commodification, capitals environmental degradation springs precisely from its imposition of the commodity form upon the natural environment. To take global warming once more as an example, it is true that the planets atmosphere has been treated as if it were an innite sink capable of absorbing endless volumes of greenhouse gas emissions, but this does not explain whythe emissions occur in the rst place. Greenhouse gas emissions occur because fossil fuels are commodities; as are the oil-elds and gas-elds and mines from which they are obtained; and the pipelines and transportation systems by which they are distributed; and the power stations, cars, houses and workplaces where they are consumed; and most importantlythe labour power invested at all these locations. Global warming is the end result of a vast chain of commodity relationships, a chain of exchange-value

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transactions, at each stage of which individual capitals are under market pressure to grow and accumulate by increasing the value and volume of the commodities in which they dealthus contributing to the volume and severity of the final environmental crisis. The Kyoto strategy will do nothing to tackle this chain of causal conditions. All it does is to add yet another commodity, and yet another market, at the end.

6. Social class and social movement OConnors ideas on the dynamics of social change, and the significance of the green/environmental movement as a force for progress, flow directly from his wider theory of a second contradiction. As we have seen, he argues that each contradiction of capitalism throws up its own agency of opposition and social change: the first contradiction throws up the working class, while the second contradiction throws up the new social movements, by which he means the green/environmental movement; the womens movement; and urban and community campaigns He does not argue that these new social movements have replaced the working class, any more than the second contradiction has superseded the rst. Rather, he is careful to keep both processes and both sets of struggles in play, with the implication that there are two paths to socialism in late capitalist society (OConnor, 1996: 198). OConnor perceives a direct relationship between specific social movements, and specic conditions of production:
new social movements seem to have an objective referent in production conditions: ecology and environmentalism in natural conditions; urban movements of the type discussed by Manuel Castells and many others in the 1970s and early 1980s in urban infrastructure and space; and movements such as feminism in the personal conditions of production. (OConnor, 1998f: 308).

He even casts the new social movements as proxies for nature itself:

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Capital & Class #72 The combination of crisis-stricken capitals externalising more costs, the reckless use of technology and nature for value realisation in the sphere of circulation, and the like, must sooner or later lead to a rebellion by nature, that is, to powerful social movements demanding an end to ecological exploitation. (OConnor, 1996: 212).

OConnors schema therefore confers upon these new social movements a status, role and signicance directly equivalent to that of the working class. The problem is that he is not comparing like with like. Social classes, and social movements, belong to different orders of reality. Membership of a social movement is by and large a matter of personal choice and personal commitment. Of course such choices are affected by cultural and other circumstances, but the voluntary element still exists, both in OConnors new social movements and in older ones such as the labour movement. The working class, however, is not a social movement. Membership of the working class is not voluntary, individuals do not choose to join it. The working class is a body of human beings united by their shared conditions of life, by their separation from the means of production, by the broad compulsion to sell their labour power in order to acquire the necessities of life. Of course, members of this class initiate and participate in social movements, both old and new. But social class and social movement remain distinct. Even the labour movement, rooted specifically in the working dass, is not identical with the working class: it addresses only certain aspects and elements of working class life. Class and movement belong to different orders of reality. We cannot therefore accept OConnors easy conation of class and movement as social agencies of equivalent significance. We can certainly agree with him that the green/environmental movement is an important phenomenon, but this still leaves us with the task of explaining how it relates to its broader social and class contextand until we do this, we cannot know the real signicance of this movement. There may turn out to be an enormous gulf between its claims and selfimage, and the class interest which it actually serves through its activities. OConnor, in asserting the equivalence of social class and social movement, simply ignores these important questions. The closest he gets to a unifying explanation of the

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new social movements is to refer to the common goals that he believes they share. But this is not a materialist explanation rooted in social and class realities; it is an idealist projection, arguing back from a wished-for end-point. What we need instead is an approach which links the collective experience of environmental crisis with the emergence of social movements, and which places this in a wider social and class context. The remainder of this section sketches out an attempt to use this approach in the case of the British green/environmental movement. The focus here is not on the activities of environmental activists or eco-warriors, essential though these may be. Our focus is upon the millions of people whose broad support or sympathy makes the green/environmental movement into a mass phenomenon, a genuine social movement which has carved out a political and cultural space within which the committed activists operate. The expansion of professional and managerial social layers in the 1970s prompted a lively debate among Marxists on changing class structures, and the possible emergence of a new middle class or professional-managerial class (Carter, 1995; Walker, 1979). Among other concepts, this debate threw up the notion of ambiguous, paradoxical, or contradictory class identities or locations. From his review of this literature, Carter argues that the roots of these ambiguities lie in the fact that many supervisory, managerial or professional roles combine two contradictory elements: co-ordination of the labour process, in which capacity the individual may legitimately be seen as part of the collective worker; and control or surveillance on behalf of capital, a function which falls outside the labour process (Carter, 1995). From the mid-1970s, the driving force behind class recomposition in Britain has been the neo-liberal offensive, whether in its virulent Thatcherite form or its New Labour variant. The elements of this offensive are well known: deregulation; privatisation; anti-union laws which have outlawed traditional forms of worker self-defence; and casualisation whereby many permanent jobs have been replaced by short-term and fixed term contracts, and a shift to freelancing and self-employment. Taken as a whole, this has created a situation where the physical, mental and emotional pressures of work have been intensified, so that stress is now regularly reported as the single most widespread workplace

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health and safety issue. These changes have struck not only at workers, but also at the professional and managerial layers at the heart of the new middle class debate. And they also ripple out more widely in society, for part of the logic of this trend is to break down traditional boundaries between the working and non-working population, to pull in new sources of labour power, and new reserve armies of labour. Despite the very real differences between the roles they are called upon to perform at work, all of the individuals affected by this intensificationfull-time and part-time workers, permanently-employed or contract-workers, freelances, managers, professionalslive by selling their labour power. And at the heart of each transaction around the sale of labour power is a bargain over time. When a worker, or supervisor, or professional, sells his or her labour power, he or she is selling a capacity to work for a certain period of time. Sometimes especially for managers and professionalsthe precise boundary in time is contractually undefined, and there is an expectation that the individual will work to the job': this in itself can be a major source of stress. But even here there is an implicit recognition that a portion of time does exist which stands outside the contract, and for most workers that recognition is explicit. This portion of time, free time, is time for ones own life, for family, friends, social occasions, rest, relaxation, privacy, home. The fact that it is not really free, the fact that capital exerts enormous pressure to define it primarily as a sphere of commodityconsumption, only reinforces the fundamental point because in order to commodify free time, capital must rst endorse and reinforce its status as free time. It must endorse and reinforce the notion that there is, and should be, a part of life which is removed from the dictates of work, walled off from the pressures of selling ones skills in a labour market. These observations may appear self-evident and mundane, but in the current context, when neo-liberal restructuring of the labour market has intensied the subjective experience of stress and vulnerability at work, they take on new rneaning. Precisely because of the increased investment of physical and emotional energy which workers and others are required to make at work, they also invest ever more heavily in private life and free time outside work, as a protected zone of rest and recuperation and capital endorses and celebrates this.

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But at the same time as capital endorses and celebrates free time and private life, it also undermines them. For most people, degradation of the natural environment is actually experienced as a process whereby free time and private life are steadily deprived of their subjective value. Thus scares over food safety and hygiene; the destruction of local or much-loved natural habitats; fear for oneself or ones children due to air pollution and transport hazards; broader underlying fears arising from global warming and climate change; are common, widelyshared experiences in Britain today, with the power to mobilise impressive and broadly based protests and campaigns. The social phenomenon that we are discussing here is often dismissed as a retreat into private life, by definition individualistic and apolitical. But if this phenomenon is in fact provoked by a collective experience of increased stress and vulnerability at work, and if it then becomes the basis for new collective initiatives in defence of private life itself, then it is simply not good enough to dismiss it in this way. Far from representing a retreat from politics or collective struggle, nonworking time and private life may be a new site of resistance, provoked by a coming together of the consequences of capitals brutal re-assertion of power in the workplace, and the consequences of its growing imposition of the commodity form upon the natural environment. Seen from this perspective, whatever the claims or self-image of the green/environmental movement in Britain, its real significance is as a collective defence of the intrinsic value of private life and free time, of a sphere of life which capital constantly seeks to commodify and degrade, but whose formal integrity it must at the same time endorse and accept. Environmental protests and campaigns certainly cannot be pigeon-holed as neat, unambiguous expressions of class strugglebut equally clearly they are related to class struggle, to collective experience, and to the dynamics of capital accumulation, in denite and identiable ways. We have tried here to understand the green/environmental movement as a phenomenon arising from a particular social and class context, rather than in terms of arbitrary political goals ascribed to it by its own members or sympathetic observers. Its emergence is related to defeats imposed upon the working class as part of the neo-liberal offensivebut this does not justify theorising a whole new contradiction of capitalism. On the

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contrary, the conditions for the rise of the green/environmental movement lie in the first contradiction of capitalism. Casualisation and increased insecurity at work have driven workers, professionals, and others back into private life, only to nd that private life too is increasingly degraded as a result of capitals commodification of the natural environment. From this starting point, from the vast range of local and subjective experiences which it engenders, the green/environmental movement takes its strength.

7. Conclusions James OConnors theory of a second contradiction of capitalism is a fascinating but flawed attempt to build upon Marxist categories in order to understand the ecological crisis of our time. It is awed, because ultimately its theoretical reach exceeds its grasp. Thus the concept of conditions of production, which underpins the theory as a whole, is enormously valuable if used with precision to refer to the natural environmentbut it lacks the Marxist legacy which OConnor claims for it, and it fails to deliver the theoretical goods when broadened out to apply to urban space and infrastructure, and to labour power. Similarly, his ambitious argument for new social movements as a new agency of social change, with an implied status equivalent to that of the working class, does not stand up. But more detailed, focused analysis reveals that it is perfectly possible to acknowledge the importance of social movements within the framework of class analysis. The British green/environmental movement, for instance, can be understood in terms of social resistance at the point where capitals imposition of the commodity form on the natural environment, intersects with its re-assertion of power in the workplace. None of this requires a second contradiction: on the contrary, the rst contradiction of capitalism, between the increasingly social nature of production and the re-assertion of private modes of appropriation, provides an adequate explanatory framework. Despite these criticisms, there is much of value in OConnors work. In particular, the combination of his argument that external nature is a condition of production,

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with his equally powerful concept of second nature, opens up an enormously fruitful, dynamic understanding of capitals impact upon the natural environment, and of the environmental contradictions of other, non-capitalist modes of production. ____________________ Thanks to Andy Danford, Roy Lockett, Bettina Lange, and Gerard Acknowledgement Strange for their helpful comments during work on this paper. ____________________
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__________(1998a) Part I Introduction: History and nature, in Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. The Guilford Press, New York & London. __________ (1998b) The conditions of production and the production of conditions, in ibid. __________(1998c) On capitalist accumulation and economic and ecological crisis, in ibid. __________(1998d) Is sustainable capitalism possible?, in ibid. __________(1998e) Socialism and ecology, in ibid. __________(1998f) Ecology movements and the State, in ibid. __________ (1999) A prolegomenon to an ecological Marxism: thoughts on the materialist conception of history, in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Issue 38, June 1999. Polanyi, K. (1957) The Great Transformation. Beacon Press, Boston. Skirbekk, G. (1996) Marxism and ecology, in T. Benton (ed.) The Greening of Marxism. The Guilford Press, New York & London. Stahel, A.W. (1999) Time contradictions of capitalism, in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Issue 37, March. Stroshane, T. (1997) The second contradiction and Karl Polanyis The Great Transformation, in Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Issue 31, September. Walker, P. (ed.)(1979) Between Labour and Capital, Harvester Press, Hassocks.

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