Contenu du sommaire : Marxismes écologiques

Marxism, Environmental Studies, Global Approaches : New Critical Horizons
Based on certain intuitions of Marx and Engels, a degree of long-standing acknowledgement of ecological problems has existed within Marxist thought. This acknowledgement led to decisive advances in the 1980s, and the trend is currently going through a significant transformation. As currently formulated, the approach foregrounds three crucial questions : matter as the basis for social life and as a stake in economic exchange ; work as the transformation of the world and as a social relation ; the long-term history of capitalism, as apprehended as the development of variable relations with regard to the appropriation and exploitation of nature. The importance of these three issues demonstrates that the Marxist tradition still constitutes an important resource for contemporary social theory.

Nature within the Limits of Capital
A consideration of the long-term trajectory of capitalist modernity, apprehended as a whole, following on from the work of Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, remains a fruitful or indeed essential line of inquiry, both for historical investigation and social theory. Such an inquiry enables us to see that, from the era of the Voyages of Discovery onwards, capitalism developed an acute voracity regarding natural resources, doing so in planetary terms. The exploitation of labour and the appropriation of nature have gone together. In both cases, it is the fact that what has been used has not been remunerated at its worth (whether nature or low-cost labour) that we are to locate the seeds of the process of enrichment benefitting the masters of the economic play of forces. Current environmental crises thus represent the tragic but comprehensible results of this underlying trend.

Nature and Society : An Old Dualism for a New Situation
Among sociologists and philosophers now taking into account the interactions between the « social » and the « naturel », in the light of present crises, an anti-dualist position is frequently and strongly invocated. In the case of Bruno Latour, or indeed certain thinkers close to Marxism, such as Jason Moore, it is affirmed that there is not, on the one hand, nature and, on the other hand, society. The intermingling and intrication, it is argued, are too comprehensive for us still to have the luxury of drawing such clear distinctions. Capitalism itself, seen in such a perspective, appears as a way not only to manage nature but also to make it exist and to give it reality. Against this approach, and from the perspective adopted here, it would appear that the critique of capitalism (which today can scarcely avoid granting decisive recognition to global warning) ought rather to recognize the robust postulate of a natural order, whose disruption or, at the very least, hazardous transformation, is provoked by our practices, when they are irrational. In a way, « nature » (which existed before us and, to a large extent, reproduces itself without us) does in effect exist. It is this we should take as our starting-point in order to reason cogently.

Acknowledging Environmental Inequalities and Justice in France
While environmental risk is unquestionably a collective or even a global horizon, it also indisputably brings into play questions of social inequality. It thus leads us to formulate what is the foundational or seminal question : who is responsible for what, and with what consequences for whom ? Indeed humans are not equal in the face of ecological crises. Nor are they equal in terms of their responsibilities or vulnerability. The social-ecological approach, among the various currents of thought striving to socialize environmental problems involves precisely the acknowledgement of the reciprocal relation linking the social question and environmental issues. It does so by demonstrating how a social logic operates as a crucial determinant in relation to environmental deterioration and crises. In return, it explores the social consequences of the degradations inflicted on the human environment. Within this framework, and from an examination of the French case, the article seeks to clarify the concept of environmental inequality and to measure its empirical amplitude. It goes on to suggest a number of possible options for the construction of a fully-fledged model of environmental justice in France.

The Financialization of Natural Disasters : Insurance, Finance and Climate Change
Nature has become the object of an « accumulation strategy » on the part of the dominant classes. In recent decades, the latter have devised a range of financial products geared to the environmental crisis : carbon-emission markets, climate sensitive derivatives, biodiversity asset banks, disaster bonds. The article examines the conditions in which these financial products have emerged. It does so by way of a theoretical framework drawing on Marxist ecology. In particular, it examines the financialization of natural disasters through disaster bonds. This enables us, in particular, to reflect on the changes evident in the role of the State as insurer « of last resort » in the face of a disaster and the recourse to big data in the management of natural events.

Rewriting History from the Anthropocene
In this interview Dipesh Chakrabarty reflects with remarkable lucidity on his personal and intellectual trajectory. Faced with the global environmental crises we are currently experiencing, in particular that of global warming, the « post-colonial » perspective he had himself defended, along with other intellectuals, and which was aimed at « provincializing Europe », must, he explains here, be enlarged. A further decentering is henceforth required. From now on, it is to a range of multiple histories, through which the whole of humanity and nature are interconnected, that we must refer. These histories require that we reason in terms of time-scales (a geological time-span) and problems (the demographic growth of the human species) which critical theory, and Marxism to begin with, had for long ignored, due to an exorbitant fascination for the « short » time-scale of the development of western capitalism.

Marx's Last Journey : Some Elements for an Intellectual Biography
The last years of Marx's life have usually been viewed as a period in which, having satisfied his intellectual curiosity, he had ceased working. The analysis of some still unpublished or little known manuscripts allows us to go beyond this legend and to show that he persevered, despite his various health problems, in his research about history. Indeed during the last months of his life Marx was a careful observer of the main events in international politics. His letters furthermore manifest his strong opposition to the colonial oppression of Algeria and Egypt. This work was interrupted by a long and painful illness that forced him to wander through England, France, Switzerland and Algeria, in search of the best climate for a recovery of his health. His sole period of residence outside Europe, two months in Algiers, gave him the opportunity to formulate some precious reflections on the Arabic world and its resistance to French occupation.

A Reexamination of a Little-Known Tradition : Austro-Marxism and Political Economy II
In this second part, several pioneering works by leading Austromarxist intellectuals are presented. The article begins with Otto Bauer's seminal book on the Nationality Question, which was also an early contribution to the analysis of the most recent developments of capitalism. Rudolf Hilferding's work on Finance Capital provided the first major contribution towards a systematic analysis of the new phenomena of big corporations and high finance. These and other works are placed in their context, insofar as they were seen by the Austromarxists as contributions to the analysis and understanding of the transformations of capitalism, before and after WWI. These thinkers consequently sought to bring the same ardour and rigour to the task of explaining the causes and consequences of the Great Depression unfolding in the aftermath of 1929. Certain major works of the Austromarxists (some still unpublished) took up this challenge. The article concludes with a brief overview of the debates about a left alternative to the politics of austerity during the great depression of the period.

Work, « Heritage Projects », Alternatives
Yves Schwartz examines the question of the substance and reach of a theory of work that is geared to changes in the contemporary world. He contends that a degree of indetermination is always an essential component in any work activity. The latter thus implies possibilities of improvement, which implicitly call upon the intelligence of the agents involved in the tasks they are carrying out. It is always possible for the task to be better performed (in terms of efficiency, though not only). In particular, it is always possible to proceed in a manner differing from the anticipations of the so-called « experts », who show themselves to be cut off from the actual experience or process and who remain confined within a set of frameworks cut off from both the needs and potentialities of workers. It is thus through the reflexivity inherent in the accomplishment of any productive act, or which, at the very least, it makes possible, that we can identify the principal resource to be tapped into in the search for social alternatives, which today are in danger of drying up as a result of the transformations of the economic world as a whole, and of the transformations in the legal, political, and cultural frameworks going along with it.

The (Post)colonial Condition between Marxism and Psychoanalysis : the Contribution of Octave Mannoni
In this second part of our study dealing with encounters between the Marxist criticism of colonialism and the Freudian analysis of the colonial condition, the focus is here on the pioneering work of Octave Mannoni, Psychologie de la colonisation (1950), written during the great Malagasy revolt of 1947. In Mannoni's book the colonial condition is for the very first time apprehended as an enduring, long-term phenomenon, and which, both for the Master and for the Slave, extends beyond the colonial era. Looking beyond the strong opposition voiced by Fanon to Mannoni's hypothesis in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), the aim of the article is to highlight the complexity of the transferential relationship between Fanon et Mannoni. It was Mannoni's book which, to some extent, authorised Fanon's production of his own analysis of the colonial condition. And, in turn, it was Fanon's prise de parole which made it possible for Mannoni to achieve a kind of catharsis, leaving the colonial world where he had spent almost thirty years of his life and choosing psychoanalysis as a new mission.

A Postcolonial Critique of the Contemporary Accumulation of Capital
The article outlines a new aspect in a long-standing inquiry into the specifically postcolonial regime of capitalist accumulation and the forms of integration it gives rise to, by way of the techniques of primitive accumulation, and into the concomitant modes of intervention on the part of the State, as agent of a « passive revolution ». To this end, it first examines the new dialectical meanings taken on by the question of transition, under the various forms assumed by the process as a result of a postcolonial situation that is itself heterogeneous. The article goes on to adopt the hypothesis put forward by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson of « the border as a method », in order to examine a number of significant features evident in the spatial recomposition provoked by postcolonial capitalism, by way of the combination between various methods of zoning and the creation of corridors in the configuration of the spaces of capitalistic circulation, in line with a process whose biopolitical implications in the postcolony are also emphasized here.

The Interpellated Subject : Beyond Althusser and Butler
According to the theory of « interpellation », capitalism brings forth a « subject form » : a subject who, by assuming its subjection, takes on its guilt. Through this « linguistic turn » within Marxism, Althusser endows social structure with speech. But how could social relations « interpellate » ? And what sort of guilt might be at stake here ? In contrast with the asymmetrical « from the top » Althusserian view, the meta-structural approach advances the concept of an amphibological interpellation, where the same demand – « freedomandequality ! » – is made by the powerful and by the people-multitude. Such is the modern « differend ». Modern society thus carries within itself the principle of its self-critique, being burdened with a guilt which is not that of breaking the Law, but of complying with it. This supposition underlies all emancipatory speech.