refusal of work/1

Working is not good for the planet!
by Philippe Godard

The work is questioned only in rare circles left-wing utopian, but, in most cases, We simply hope for a simple reduction of working time. Instead ...

 

In 1992, the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro had tried to bury the ecology as a political movement, making believe that the various types of pollution - at the time the central theme in ecology, ranging from industrial pollution and agricultural up nuclear pollution - would be reabsorbed, because the States undertook to deal with it. Some have believed, beginning with a number of ecologists, therefore, have abandoned any criticism of the production system and have aligned themselves with the capitalist visions of progress, growth of "green" clean industry and agriculture rational. Fifteen years later, in 2007, the international group of experts on climate change and Al Gore (!) Received the Nobel Prize for Peace, and from that moment on the ecology has become very fashionable again ...
Yet not much has happened in all these years in terms of ecology policy, apart from the awareness that the climate was in crisis and that the problem now was to get out of this imbalance. It is a discourse that Ammann continued pounding politicians, journalists, thinkers and scientists, media, and even certain singers or movie actors. Well, as out of ecological crisis, when the pillars of society, responsible for this crisis, they are never challenged?

The climate crisis happens to bean!

This genial climate crisis! Arrive at the right time to save capitalism. They tell us that before long there will be no more oil, at a time when capitalism has defeated - and then lost - his old enemy, the "state socialism" in Stalin sauce, and attempts to invent a new one: the terrorists and other Islamists do not have the same firepower at the ideological level of the nomenclature of Moscow. The climate crisis here is a new opponent to be tackled together, gathered behind our Heads of State! They ask us to tighten their belts at the same time which shows a worldwide Microclear of super-rich, several thousand individuals who buy sports cars and yachts, luxury apartments in global cities on the planet, people who collect works of art ...
But, of course, we are the ones who pollute and warm the climate too! We are told that we must give up the public services of the welfare state just at a time when finance becomes the key to all the spectacular commodity system of capitalism and that you gain much more by speculating on the Stock Exchange that invests in the productive sector. And we who must work harder to overcome the failures of the capitalist system ...
Let's stop here, the picture is too well known. The key element, so that this building capitalist, corrupt and oppressive, which has become very unstable due to its own internal contradictions, endure in spite of everything, you get our liabilities. Well, for the liability of individuals, the best way is to make them fear and blame. In this context, the climate crisis is convenient to the capitalists we are told that all die and, most importantly, blaming us. The weather warms up because every morning we take the car (that advertising has done everything to make us want and that encouraged us to change before it became unusable) and burn gasoline (which makes the happiness of oil magnates, from Saudi princes and the Iranian mullahs to Exxon Mobil, Total and Agip to). If children leave open the tap while brushing their teeth, away from us, in Ethiopia and Bolivia, other people do not even have clean water and become ill with cholera ...
Again, the examples could be multiplied indefinitely guilt of this speech, which causes a generalized impotence because everything happens in a context of de-politicization of the world. For twenty years, the victory of the "neo-liberalism on the Soviet Union, and still more by the advent of democratic tyrants as Berluskozy, or Putvedev Bushobama, depoliticization is the trump card of the true masters of the world, called Monsanto , Syngenta, Exxon Mobil, Areva, Pfizer, Nestlé, CNN, Time Warner...

The work at the center of the crisis

The work is at the heart of this process of blame / depoliticization. We work to eat and we know produce harmful from an ecological standpoint, while capitalism does not bother to cut its toxic emissions. In the moments that we spend outside of work and consumption, most of us try to destroy them with the thought that the system forced us to do during the day in exchange for a wage. Day after day, this process ends up being extremely guilt, according to a model Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions in which guided by the sense of guilt arise as a way to live or survive. This guilt is the price we pay for living in this system without having to rebel and risk free. Blame is the price of infamy.
In a similar socio-economic context (or in spite of this context), the work remains the center of all political programs. Most parties do not even think to reduce working time, indeed: across Europe is raising the retirement age. The work is questioned only in rare circles of the left utopian, but, in most cases, we limit ourselves to hope for a simple reduction of working time. But the reduction of working time is a radical attack on the role that work plays in our lives or simply aims to improve the productivity of the machines to the point where the instruments would ultimately produce for us?
Opposition to work is not enough if you merely ask for a reduction, albeit very significant, the organization of work: reduce it without changing the mode of production, goods and items without abolishing the goods means trusting our future to technology, scientists, experts and machines. This was the dream of Marx, Lafargue and many others ... Well, is it not the technological advances associated with the cult of the work that led us to an imbalance climate? The enemy, in this case, is not only the neo-liberal capitalism, and every form of productivity, including "green", also known as "ecological".
The real culprits of climate imbalance, work and techno-science, are never placed in the dock! Would we be accused manufacturers, we are guilty of wasting water, oil or tropical forests, pollute the air, land and rivers. This is the strategic aim of the campaign blaming the climate crisis: totally depoliticize the issue. Well, how to get rid of the enemy if we are convinced that it is within us, that we are the cause of our destruction?

Overcome the ecological crisis

For this reason, overcoming the present situation is not granted. However, we have before us many ways, but very few are "reassuring" and even less revolutionary. The most popular today is that of green capitalism and Al Gore or Cohn Bendit, a way to produce clean, no heating of the atmosphere. We also believe, but, anyway, this "solution", especially not put into question the cult of work, and then the relationship of submission and domination, at local and global at the same time. The "green" capitalism in salsa today that Democratic attempts to sell a large marketing operation may well give way to a green dictatorship, much more effective because it would require everyone to "sacrifice" that the capitalist system has given us so far automobiles, household appliances, heating in winter and summer air conditioning etc.. Such a dictatorship, although "green", and entrench the hierarchical relationships of domination, why should we endure it in the name of our survival, such a coup will occur much more easily since we end up believing that today, the main thing is to save the planet. The fact that we've got to approve the dictatorship in the name of a hope than the real risk is that today make us run the doom of all kinds.
The decrease is presented as an alternative way to green capitalism, but that its program, although it is uncertain, can be achieved globally, it is necessary that countries far more populous than ours, such as India, China, 'Indonesia and so on., suddenly change (by virtue of what miracle?) the conditions of their political and economic objectives ... Instead of aiming at a global or regional hegemony, they should abandon the dream of power and increase the standard of living for a kind of self-sacrifice in the name of the survival of humanity. This seems implausible, if we exclude the imposition of dictatorial measures "green" crops up again and here the green dictatorship.
What is an ecological solution to the climate crisis? An environmental policy? Ecology starts with an understanding of the relations of domination that humans do not have to decide among themselves and with their environment. Non-destructive for a relationship with our natural environment means to criticize all forms of domination of men over women, adults over children, "Christians" on Muslims and vice versa, etc.. Because we are all part of the 'environment "the other, which, in turn, are our" environment ".

The decrease as an alternative

An environmental policy is a policy of complete absence of domination. It implies the rejection of power enjoyed by the States, experts and transnational corporations, for us to decide our future. The environment is entirely compatible with a society based on anti-authoritarian communism, anarchy and the absence of violence, but it certainly is green with the dictatorship, which requires, of necessity, the maintenance of relations of domination among human beings , especially at work. The creation of short chains for our sustenance, the fact of picking up our lives (and our survival) in all fields, from agriculture to culture and reflection, it is possible in areas that do not need a technologized world to develop - and retain, in this way, the diversity of the world, worlds, against alienating the approval of global capital. Even today, as demonstrated by the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, and numerous historical examples show that the emancipatory human accomplishments have nothing to expect from the whole or by technoscience.
Ecology is anti-authoritarian utopia? The real unconscious consists rather in addressing the climate crisis without identifying the true causes of the degradation of our planet. It is our job, whose harmful effects are greatly exaggerated dall'inaudito power of technoscience, which led us to where we are. Living ecology begins with the exit from the world of work.