| We have only recently realized that we could destroy the ecological pillars of human life. Strictly this problem has been with us since agriculture and has only been greatly exacerbated by industry with its radical indifference to its by-products and to place. The effects on nature of our activities properly should constitute an entire dimension for social criticism, not just result in some ad hoc reflections and policies. Environmental degradation is not a mere "factor" peculiar to modernity or capitalism, the usual environmental culprits. Happily, however, ecological theory can directly help us to reorder our social arrangements. Agriculture is inherently disruptive of nature but can be integrated with local natural cycles of waste processing. Future polities based in local economies could ensure their sustainability by using ecologically sensitive farming to monitor the condition of the environment while also reducing the scale of socio-political problems. Lessons can be learned from the case of English farming which for a long time was modern, indeed capitalist, and yet ecologically benign so long as it held the central place in the economy. The landed classes had an interest in maintaining the condition of the land and were de facto sound ecological stewards. The story of world agriculture since the last quarter of the 19th century contrariwise illustrates the dangers (economic and ecological) of treating land exactly like any other "commodity". Above all, the economic pressures on agriculture this century have led to its being industrialized. We must deindustrialize agriculture as the first step in a process of what could be described as socialist transformation, a "taking back of the economy" from monolithic modern industry by persons living in communities culturally centred on their local agricultures. In order to protect fledgling local economies special purpose local currencies could be used to institutionalize ecologically and humanly grounded distinctions among use-values. |
