Solidarity’s current debate about the future of the nuclear industry appears to be an argument at cross purposes. Martin Thomas, Les Hearn and others have argued that nuclear is not as dangerous or as lethal as some other energy sources like coal. If only we had a planned economy under workers’ control without a £70 billion Trident replacement project in the pipeline, then nuclear would be a good idea.
I think its useful to look again at Marx’s metaphor of the “metabolic rift”. As the grandfather of historical materialism, Marx not only developed a radically practical philosophical worldview, but also an ecological analysis that described what human beings are doing to the planet. In Capital Marx defines “labour” as the “universal condition for the metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man [sic] and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence.”
At the time of writing, the concept of metabolism was just beginning to be theorised by the scientific community and Marx used this as a metaphor to describe the relationship between humanity and the natural world. The term implies a dynamic material exchange that creates growth. In turn, this growth creates new conditions for further material exchanges.
So labour is “the process by which man [sic], through his actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He sets in motion his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his needs.” From the most primitive societies to advanced capitalism, labour is the process through which we manipulate natural materials in order to satisfy human needs and in the process, set up new conditions for our future labour and the reproduction of human life.
The expansionist nature of capitalism has meant that there is now no part of the planet that is untouched by human labour and nature itself is socially produced. This can be seen in simple terms in the way a peasant might plant an apple tree near to their farm or in global terms with CO2 emissions which have changed the earth's climate.
Under capitalism this metabolic process breaks down. Marx developed this idea with particular regard to capitalist agriculture. Having read the work of the soil chemist, Justus von Liebig, Marx began to see that capitalism was robbing the soil of all its nutrients, a problem associated with pollution and human waste. Capitalism “produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The results of this is a squandering of the vitality of the soil, which is carried by trade far beyond the bounds of a single country.”
By robbing the soil in this way, capitalism has had to find ways to replenish it. “Capitalist production only turns towards the land only after its influence has exhausted it and after it has devastated its natural qualities.” (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value part 3). Thus with the desertification of the world’s soil, under capitalist agriculture, society had to develop a new metabolism in the form of the industrial fertilisers, pesticides and machinery.
Capitalism has massively increased the productive power of the agricultural worker and thus freeing up labour-power to develop the agricultural technology. The descendants of peasant farmers are now working in tractor factories and agroscientific laboratories. But there are also massive material inputs needed to create capitalism’s vast yields. We now live in a world where the production of one calorie of food requires 10 calories of fossil fuel contributing various pollutants to the world’s ecosystems.
The metabolic rift is a failure to maintain a means of reproduction and one we are feeling very sharply with the approach of peak oil and climate change. The metabolism is dynamic and socially mediated. Unlike, some reactionary green myths, the maintenance of our means of reproduction does not rely on us returning to a pre-industrial age. It relies on us manipulating socieity’s immense productive powers to create and recreate a dynamic equilibrium with nature, an equilibrium that allows for change and progress.
So what has any of this got to do with nuclear energy? Marx argued that “Freedom [from material necessity] can consist only in this, that socialised man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under collective control, instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.”
As Les and Martin point out, capitalism produces all sorts of toxic waste products which kill people. However, nuclear energy produces waste that will continue to be a problem for future generations for tens of thousands of years. It will be a permanent reminder of this historic rift for any future socialist society. Saying that science will develop a solution to this problem is a failure to look reality squarely in the face.
Capitalism systemically destroys the means by which human society can reproduce itself. This is seen in climate change, soil depletion, deforestation and the extinction of thousands of species of plants and animals. The system is rigged for the creation of unending profit, exploiting workers and nature alike. It worships the alienated exchange-form of our labour and ignores use-value, the realities of human and natural worlds.
The nuclear industry is one of the best example of how the system creates a rift in the metabolism between humanity and nature. The dynamics of capitalism create a technology which burdens the next 10,000 years with highly volatile waste products in the interest of short term profits. Whilst nuclear technology might be a rational energy source for a future society of associated producers, it is difficult to imagine that this society would opt for this technology without the scientific know how to deal with the waste problems. It might be that capitalism will develop an effective solution to the problem of nuclear waste but it will be done on their terms (ie only if there is a profit to be made).
Whether or not we believe there is a role for nuclear in a future society, we should be absolutely clear that the bourgeoisie views nuclear technology in a way fundamentally opposed to the how Marxists should see it. Their concern is for profit, ours is for human need, and the nuclear power stations that they are proposing to build will reflect this difference.
There is no mention on the government’s (or any of their corporate partners) agenda of developing Thorium-based nuclear generators despite the obvious advantages of this technology from a social and ecological perspective. There is certainly no mention of workers’ control or giving up the nuclear arsenal. The power plants that will be built and the waste management systems that they put in place will have the profit-motive written into the very essence and will be very difficult to utilise in a democratically planned economy.
The government’s proposals will mean that we are stuck with these power stations until 2050 (at least), with waste products that will have to be dealt with for the next 4000 generations.
Capitalism does not simply develop benign technology that can be appropriated wholesale in a workers’ revolution. Capitalism develops many technologies that a rationally planned economy would avoid and it utilises the technologies it does develop in irrational and destructive ways. The development of the car has changed the way in which we build our towns and has created various public health problems, alienation (road rage) and environmental destruction.
Similarly, modern housing is dictated by capitalist logic, with an abundance of one, two and three bed apartments, which are not only ecologically unsound but leave millions isolated. A socialist reconstruction of society will involve knocking down a lot of walls and welding together a lot of cars to make more communal, ecologically sound use of our technology. But any particular technology developed under capitalism will invariably bear the mark of this ecological destructive and alienating system. In some cases the technology can be modified in ways that will restore the metabolic relationship. But in the case of nuclear this seems unlikely.
Opposition to nuclear technology is not based on “Luddite” anti-technological reaction. It is a recognition that the current technology (which is still very much in its infancy) and of the current political climate, dominated by the rule of profit, will create power stations and waste that would burden any future socialist society.
It is based on the Marxist understanding that capitalism invests society’s wealth in the interests of profit rather than human need, and that the type of technology (and the means in which that technology is utilised) reflect this priority.
