ABSTRACT

Somerville's rejoinder highlights some fundamental divergences between ecologically unequal exchange theory and the classical Marxist position. This brief intervention addresses a few points in his rejoinder that are particularly illustrative of the incompatibility of the two frameworks. It is argued that historical materialism should acknowledge the materiality of world trade as foundational to global inequalities and unsustainability.

KEYWORDS

Value; unequal exchange; materialism

Peter Somerville’s (2022) rejoinder has further clarified the main divergences between the theoretical frameworks of classical Marxism and the theory of ecologically unequal exchange (EUE). First, given that labour-power in capitalism is a commodity on the market, the latter position indeed understands the relation between wage-workers and capitalists as one of (unequal) exchange. Exchange is not the same as reciprocity, but may be a means of mystifying appropriation (cf. Godelier 1986). Market transactions always imply exchange, even as they veil what clearly amounts to asymmetric transfers. To recognize an exchange as in some sense unequal, we must apply other metrics than money, such as embodied labour time, tons of materials, Joules of energy, or hectares of land (Dorninger et al. 2021). Such biophysical asymmetries in exchange are fundamental to accumulation and very far from irrelevant.

Second, to posit that economic value is based on socially necessary labour time remains a contested assertion (cf. Kallis and Swyngedouw 2018) that does not acknowledge the process of valuation as a social and cultural construction of value (Röpke 2021). The Marxian evocation of “fetishism” actually underscores such a constructivist perspective, as do recent theories of financialization (Christophers 2018). As David Graeber (2007:, 141) intriguingly observes, a fetish is a representation that “brings into being what it represents.”

Third, Somerville is wrong to assert that “the resources dissipated in producing the commodities is not the same as the energy embodied in the finished products.” In accordance with the definition of “embodied resources’ established at least since 1988 (Odum 1988), “embodied” refers to resources that have been used in producing commodities. Otherwise, it would be meaningless to speak, for instance, of embodied land or embodied labour. It appears that Somerville needs to acquaint himself with four decades of literature on ecological economics and industrial ecology.

Fourth, Somerville incorrectly states that if more resources are going from periphery to core than from core to periphery, “this is not the same as an exchange of energy.” Yes, it is. As Stephen Bunker (1985), Howard Odum (1988), and others showed long ago, the exchange of commodities between cores and peripheries can be understood as an unequal exchange of embodied energy.

The asymmetric global resource flows of the Anthropocene present a critical juncture for all of us inspired by Marx’s pioneering unveiling of economic injustices. The skewed metabolism of world society must be of crucial concern to historical materialism. If we disregard the materiality of world trade we shall be as incapable as mainstream economics of dealing with global inequalities, climate change, and other alarming aspects of our planetary predicament.

From: Capitalism Nature Socialism 2023 34 (3)

Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2023.2166551.