Nancy Fraser: Against the environmentalism of the rich
« Against the environmentalism of the rich. What capitalism’s history can teach us about ecopolitics »
Deepening the argument of the previous lecture, this one historicizes capitalism’s ecological contradiction. Charting its passage through four socioecological regimes of accumulation, I disclose a series of regime-specific impasses, never definitively resolved, but provisionally defused by temporary “fixes” that offload the damages onto subaltern communities. The effect is to uncover the pervasive entanglement of environmental despoliation with class, gender and racial-imperial domination in capitalist society. Canvassing the history of eco-resistance, I observe that efforts to protect “nature,” far from being free-standing, have almost always been integrated into broader struggles that focus as well on labor, social reproduction and political power. Unmasking single-issue ecologism as “the environmentalism of the rich,” I weigh the prospects for uniting proponents of environmental justice, degrowth, and a Green New Deal in a trans-environmental, anti-capitalist movement, whose goal could be called ecosocialism.