Common ground and conflict in the struggle over the use of forests and labour in British Columbia: The case of Greenpeace and the Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canad

According to James O'Connor, the second contradiction of capitalism stems from capital's tendency to destroy its own conditions of production (i.e., labour, nature, and infrastructure). O'Connor asserts that the crises engendered by capitalist exploitation of production conditions creates the potential for cooperation between the environmental movement and the labour movement. This dissertation utilizes O'Connor's theory as a framework for analysing how Greenpeace and the Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada (PPWC) have responded to capital's dual exploitation of forests and forest sector workers. Data were gathered utilizing several research methods including open ended interviews with woodworkers and environmentalists, a case study of a corporate propaganda campaign, and discourse analysis. Support was found for O'Connor's propositions regarding the positive relationship between capital's exploitation of labour and nature as well as his major propositions regarding the relationship between capital and the state in the production of commodities. O'Connor's treatment of social movements needs to be refined as he implies that social movements respond to objectively perceived crises created by capitalist exploitation of land and labour. As theorized by Alain Touraine, the policies of Greenpeace and the PPWC have "mutated" to adapt to changing social conditions. However, the data gathered for this study indicate that both woodworkers and environmentalists subjectively construct their understandings of the crises engendered by capital's dual exploitation of labour and nature from a multitude of sources. Moreover, both capital and the state attempt to quash significant social change by engaging in propaganda campaigns designed to reaffirm the dominant ideology which justifies the existing structure of the forest industry. Therefore, the responses that social movements have to capital's dual exploitation of labour and nature remain highly unpredictable.