Ecological Material Conditions and Theories of Value

The climate is changing, it is getting hotter everywhere, due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.  Heavy reliance on fossil fuels has actually increased the global temperatures.

• “Since 1901, the average surface temperature across the contiguous 48 states has risen at an average rate of 0.16°F per decade. Average temperatures have risen more quickly since the late 1970s (0.31 to 0.54°F per decade since 1979). Eight of the top 10 warmest years on record for the contiguous 48 states have occurred since 1998, and 2012 and 2016 were the two warmest years on record.
• “Worldwide, 2016 was the warmest year on record, 2020 was the second-warmest, and 2011–2020 was the warmest decade on record since thermometer-based observations began. Global average surface temperature has risen at an average rate of 0.17°F per decade since 1901 , similar to the rate of warming within the contiguous 48 states. Since the late 1970s, however, the United States has warmed faster than the global rate.

United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Climate Change Indicators

The temperature in Lytton British Columbia on June 29th 2021 was 49.6 degrees Celciuis.  

“Lytton, a village in the Fraser Canyon located about 260 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, also saw record-breaking highs of 47.9 C on Monday and 46. 6 C on Sunday.  Before this week, the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada was 45 C in Saskatchewan in 1937.

“On Tuesday alone, seven locations in B.C. met or exceeded the 45 C mark, including Lytton, Cache Creek (47.4 C), Grand Forks (45 C), Kamloops (47.3 C), Kelowna (45.2 C), Lillooet (46.7 C) and Osoyoos (45 C).’

“The BC Coroners Service said there has been a significant increase in deaths since Friday, with extreme heat suspected to have played a role.

“From Friday to Monday, there were 233 reported deaths in the province, up from an average 130 deaths over a four-day period.

“In Vancouver, police said Tuesday they have responded to more than 65 sudden deaths since the heat wave began on Friday. The city normally sees about three or four sudden deaths every day.

CBC 6 29 2021

Climate change is racking our world.  Deforestation in British Columbia, due to the logging and timber industries, who have been at it for years, are a contributing factor.  Cutting the forest, especially the old growth, raises temperatures.  Photosynthesis in plants creates oxygen, it breaks the Carbon Dioxide, fixing the carbon in the plant, and and storing it in the process.  The Oxygen is given off from the photosynthesis, which all animals breathe.

Deforestation removes the forests ability to fix CO2 from the atmosphere; the cut trees are no longer producing oxygen, and transpiring water, cooling the climate.  British Columbia, like Alaska, has been cutting the old growth pristine forests to make a profit.  In twisted logic they feel the forests are just sitting there doing nothing, they see no value in the forests, so they cut them down mercilessly.

This has been the dominant economic idea since Adam Smith wrote Wealth Of Nations, when a forest was seen as being a free resource, sometimes with rent paid to the landowner to log it, but basically a resource to capitalists, when we consider the landowner as being one of them.  To make a long story short, the value of a commodity is how much labour is required to produce it. The current idea of a forest is it is worth the amount of trees or minerals beneath it.  It is open game for capitalists to remove the trees and mine the metals or petroleum underneath it.

Recognition of forests as important for stopping climate change is only just beginning.  The idea of an old growth forest as a resource with a price tag is the paradigm.  It is not seen as a priceless work of art for future generations of humans or sovereign ecological territory, rather the value of it is as a commodity that can be bought or sold.

By only seeing activity that creates a material commodity as being productive, capitalism is rapidly destroying the ecology.  In BC and Alaska this perverse logic still exists, in a condition not much different from Adam Smith’s time.  The consciousness of the human being has been expanding with technological development, we now have satellites in space orbiting Earth, and we can map out climate change scientifically.   Our data shows consistent warming in the last century, which is damaging ecology.  In the past we could only record temperatures on the ground, often without even computers to help us. 

Now we are mapping climate change with powerful computers, and the Republican bourgeoisie are left to question the science. 

This group of dinosaurs is caught in capitalist logic, which considers ecology to have no value besides as exchange value, money, which can be had by logging.

This paradigm has to change.  The logging of old growth in BC and Alaska is resulting in climate change.  The economic ideas have to change, ecology must have value beyond simply a resource for human exploitation.  The land has to be viewed as more than a commodity which only has exchange value as a resource to exploit, sold to create capital. 

A revolutionary shift in consciousness is taking hold, with climate change starting to figure into the capitalist mind.  Even large capitalists are seeing the science, the liberal progressive bourgeoisie is shifting towards acknowledging climate change as real, and recognizing that society is going to have to change their economic ideas to stop the ecological consequences of uncontrolled exploitation of the ecology for exchange value.  The Republican bourgeois are way behind, Donald Trump disbelieved climate change was real, he thought it was a hoax designed to keep the ruling class weak, and hinder the ability of capitalists to make a profit.  The ruling class seems to still be largely subordinate to Trump; he is still the leader of their party.  

Perhaps it is an issue of quality, where the right not to make a mess is part of the value of a commodity.  Clearly simply the amount of labour required to log a forest cannot continue to be the value of a commodity.  Something is going to have to give, political economy is not a completed science.  The ideas of value and surplus value are still evolving, our science demands we formulate new ideas of value including the life of other species, ecology, in what we consider the value of a commodity to be.  This shift in material reality, a world where climate change is recognized, and forests are not simply judged as x amount of dollars worth of trees, has to be the reality.

Specifically we have to change the practice of the value of a commodity to include ecology as an integral part of it.  The right not to make a mess, the idea behind recycling, is there to guide us. The days are gone when a forest can simply be exploited with no real view of climate change and ecological destruction.  Political economy is coming with, its laws changing with new ideas, it is the essence of the science.

Society is ready for further progress. It is up to us to figure how the value of a commodity is not simply what the base cost of exploitation of ecology is, rather social and ecological factors figure into the value of a commodity.  A paradigm shift brought forward by the natural sciences, meshing with economic ideas.  A revolutionary change of the consciousness level of the human being.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic