Development & Aid, Environment, Tierramerica

“Profit Is Enemy Number One of the Environment”

SANTIAGO, Oct 13 2008 (IPS) - Capitalism is a brutal, Mephistophelian intervention in the natural systems, says Chilean economist and ecologist Marcel Claude in this exclusive Tierramérica interview.

The imminent global recession could reduce pressure on natural resources as a result of lower production, but it could also mean a relaxation of environmental protection practices, warns Claude, whose 1995 report about the disappearance of Chile's forests within two decades caused a stir. He was working for the Central Bank at the time.

The speculative bubble of the real estate market in the United States was just the trigger. A deeper explanation is the decline of the “real economy,” because governments have allowed the concentration of property and an increase in inequality and poverty to the benefit of the “financial economy,” says economist Claude in this dialogue with Tierramérica.

With a Master's degree from the University of Chile and as a candidate for a doctorate from Belgium's' Catholic University of Louvain, Claude is a professor in three higher learning institutions in his country and has a long history as an environmental activist.

In 2006 he won a lawsuit against the Chilean government at the Inter-American Human Rights Court for access to public information and he was successful in a legal case about the conflict of interests in the debate of the Chilean Law on Fisheries.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Today everyone is theorizing about capitalism because of the global financial crisis. What do you understand “capitalism” to be?

MARCEL CLAUDE: At least people are talking about capitalism again. We had only been talking about globalization, about neoliberalism. But capitalism exists; it is more alive than ever and will continue to live for a long time. The current crisis is proof of that.

Capitalism built a tremendous capacity to develop its reason for being: profit. The essence of capitalism is not private property, although sometimes it does serve as a legal instrument to materialize profit, nor is it right-wing governments.

Capitalism is the search for profit, for the profit margin. What moves capitalism are two mortal sins: avarice and greed. They are not human virtues, like solidarity, justice, truth and love.

All capitalist institutions tend to favor this. If private property leads to profit, good. If not, capitalism will step right over it. The same thing happens with the political constitution of the government or the financial regulatory system.

The problem is that profit is always obtained from a basis of exploitation. It always tries to obtain the wealth that is on the other side. And there are two sources of that wealth: the labor of humanity and the productivity of natural ecosystems.

The capitalist maintains that productive activity “creates” wealth, but it is simply a “conversion”, a “transformation” of wealth, which comes primarily from nature. Wealth is the biological productivity of natural ecosystems.

Capitalism is a brutal, Mephistophelian intervention in vital systems, which it converts into economic products out of necessity to sustain human life. But because capitalists control the entire productive process they end up appropriating the rights to life.

TIERRAMÉRICA: What effects can the current turbulence in the reproduction of capitalism have? Will we enter a new phase or are we near its end?

MC: As long as there is wealth there will be capitalism. Because avarice and ambition will always exist, if profit is not to be the determining factor there has to be regulation — ensure that in the definition of government policies there are other values that have greater weight. The other possible factor in the destruction of capitalism is the disappearance of all life on the planet.

In the best of cases, we could advance towards a more responsible phase. That is, if the big multinational corporations and the influential business executives don't prevent it. Forty percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) is in the hands of 200 multinational corporations. To move to another phase depends on the magnitude of the crises and on governments being able to control it and recover from it — which I think would be difficult.

TIERRAMÉRICA: Who will be hurt most by the crisis?

MC: Always the poor. Governments have put a priority sustaining the financial system with resources coming from taxpayers, which weakens their ability to generate employment, expand the economy and confront social problems. They are choosing to cut spending on education, health, infrastructure and research.

That will mean less economic activity, increased unemployment and a decline in demand. It could reduce pressure on natural resources because of lower production, but it could also mean relaxed practices of environmental protection in order to make other projects more feasible.

TIERRAMÉRICA: If capitalism is not sustainable, what is the alternative?

MC: So far no one has constructed an alternative, and I don't know that it will be necessary. We can't change a system overnight, but we can intervene in a politically decisive way.

Government policies should be aimed practically at extinguishing all forms of profit. Because I understand profit as being earnings that don't come from your own work. The policies of the State should be oriented to a society based on labor. Today there is no correspondence between the wealth of some men and their labor.

The governments should build an economic, political and social order sustained by work. Profit is enemy number one of society and the environment; it is the poison and the opium of the people. The logic of capital is accumulation and the logic of labor is subsistence, maintaining one's life, which is better for nature.