Socialising Nature

What are the politics of nature in a burning world? Should nature be more strongly protected by giving it rights, or appreciated differently by creating new values? Or, should it be actively socialised by directly confronting its owners? In what follows, I argue for the third option, defending a classical socialist vision of transformation, but applying it in a wholly new, ecological context. Unlike a workplace, nature cannot simply be seized by its employees and run under democratic self-management. Nature is not just another factor of production, an input to be adjusted, a value to be determined — it is the condition and limit of our existence, our “inorganic body” as Marx described it, our self outside ourselves.[1] To socialise nature would thus transform ourselves, as well.

To make this case, I lay out three strategies for positively transforming our relation to nature in the context of ecological crisis. The first describes the many popular attempts to bring the power of private law to the rescue of ecosystems, which I call the legalisation of nature. The second strategy encompasses the work of creating new moral concepts, frameworks and values for relating to nature, land and the biosphere in general. I call this the moralisation of nature. The third involves the collective task of challenging the underlying property relations and economic frameworks that govern our relation to the natural world. This would be a socialisation of nature. Whereas the first two strategies offer strong tools for protecting some ecosystems and better orienting our behaviour towards them, they are heavily constrained in practice, and ultimately incapable of challenging the economic imperatives that drive the plunder and degradation of nature. For these first two strategies to succeed, even on their own terms, they would have to push beyond themselves towards a project of active socialisation. That is to say: only the socialisation of nature can redeem the minimal demand of living less “wrongly”[2] on this planet together.