Toby Lovat, Nicola Clewer, and Doug Elsey
School of Humanities
University of Brighton
10-11 Pavilion Parade
Brighton
United Kingdom
BN2 1RA
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Capitalist Realism, Neo-liberalism, and the Basis of Political Alternatives
Introduction
Debates over what is often referred to as the “global environmental problem” increasingly
seem to have coalesced into a polarised battle between supposedly idealised goals (both
scientific and moral) on one hand, and the restraints of political and economic “realism” on
the other. In the case of anthropogenic climate change, the cuts in green house gas
emissions required by science are deemed politically and economically “unrealistic”. Moral
arguments premised on equality and social justice tend not to be disputed on philosophic
grounds but are simply dismissed as naïve utopian idealism. The yardstick for measuring the
viability of any strategy to address human degradation of the environment is increasingly
defined by reference to the existing economic status quo and concordantly restricted to
market-based mechanisms. In this way capitalism continues to be presented as the only
possible form of socio-economic organisation.
We argue that ecological modernisation [EM] – a preeminent paradigm for environmental
policy – presents a timely example of the dissemination of apolitical market “realism” which
works to ideologically reinforce the neo-liberal status quo. In translating eco-political issues
into question of technical efficacy, EM fundamentally challenges the economy-nature
contradiction, naturalising capitalist socio-economic relations by rendering the economy a
neutral, apolitical sphere. This situation, where politics proper is reduced to principles of
technocratic managerialism and market-efficiency, has been referred to as a post-political
moment. Despite this, it is clear that ecological concerns resist complete incorporation into
the economic status quo; they remain (for the moment) an area where politicisation is being
fought for.
1
We argue that the prevalence of such a post-political “realism” is not peculiar to
environmental discourses, but must be understood as a central feature of neo-liberal
capitalism, which has successfully naturalised itself as an ideological position. We argue that
the normalisation of the cultural sensibility known as postmodernism has been essential to
the ‘construction of consent’ that has accompanied the process of neo-liberalisation in part
through clearing the ideological ground for neo-liberalism by creating an ideational “void”
that has proved highly receptive to neo-liberal market values. The situation that emerges
from the insertion of neo-liberal market values into the postmodern void can be usefully
characterised by Mark Fisher’s concept “capitalist realism”, where capitalism seemingly
dominates the horizon of the possible. The political impact of this has been a narrowing our
conceptions to the point where, in the phrase used by both Frederic Jameson and Slavoj
Žižek, today ‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of
capitalism.’ 1
In this apparently post-political moment, the possibility of emancipatory politics and the
foundation upon which such a politics might be based are thrown into question. Political
subjectivity is a crucial component of this question. While critiques of the “there is no
alternative” neo-liberal ideology suggest a totalising effect upon the subject, we suggest that
the interpellation of the subject is never so complete and, rejecting the politics of the event
as a solution to this impasse, argue that the development of an alternative vision of the
good will be essential to the emergence of any form of emancipatory politics that can
challenge the status quo.
We turn to the example of the Food Sovereignty movement, and La Via Campasina, as a
possible instance of such an emancipatory political project. The Food Sovereignty Movement
emanates from the struggles of some of the world’s poorest and most marginalised peoples
for material survival in the face of the destructive effects of neo-liberal capitalism. Despite
their seemingly naïve proposal for a return to a bucolic idyll, the movement, although not
explicitly anti-capitalist, seeks to reimagine subjectivity and political possibilities based on
reinvigoration of humanism. As such, we argue, it can provide us with insight into what it
might mean to build a new emancipatory politics.
1
This phrase is used by both Žižek who attributes it to Jameson and Jameson who attributes the statement to an anonymous
source beginning with the words: ‘Someone once said…’ Fredric Jameson, ‘Future City’, New Left Review, 21, May/June 2003,
pp. 65-79, p. 76.
2
We begin by outlining what we refer to as the “realist turn” in environmental discourse,
which consists in a shift in the justification that is offered for market-based solutions to
environmental concerns. Such approaches are increasingly defended by recourse to an
ostensibly pragmatic argument about the need to be “realistic” about what is possible. The
key implicit assumption in being “realistic” in this way is accepting that capitalism is the
ultimate background and zero-point for environmental problem-solving. We argue that EM
assumes and promotes precisely such a “realism”, which has the ideological function of
simultaneously marginalising alternative eco-political approaches while reifying and
naturalising capitalist social relations that are themselves implicated in eco-decline. We
argue that, while not strictly reducible to the neo-liberal political project, EM is a prime
example of the re-parsing of essentially political problems into a market-driven, technocratic
managerialism that is the hallmark of the so-called post-political moment which both
reflects and reinforces the neo-liberal project. The reduction of politics to the logic of
professional management renders particular configurations of social relations naturalised;
they lose their historical contingency and the possibility of transformative social agency
oriented towards emancipatory political formations is bestowed with the quality of an
idealistic fantasy.
We contextualise this “realist turn” in environmentalist discourse in relation to the
increasingly hegemonic status of neo-liberalism. Offering an account neo-liberalism as a
cultural, ideology and political project we highlight its constructivist nature. We argue that
postmodernism has been instrumental in ‘constructing consent’ and clearing an ideational
“space” which is highly receptive to the insertion of neo-liberal market values and its
necessitarian logic. We draw on Jameson’s theorisation of postmodernism as a starting point
for analysing the nature and impact of postmodernism in terms of what, for the purposes of
this paper, are the two most significant aspects of postmodernism; its rejection of radical
emancipatory politics and its impact on subjectivity. Via a reading of Lyotard’s influential
work The Postmodern Condition we explore the manner in which postmodern relativism,
anti-universalism and anti-humanism, as well as the notion of the postmodern sublime, lead
to a narrowing of our conceptions of the political which is reflected in the rise of identity
politics. The question of subjectivity is then taken up as a key problematic for how we
conceive of a new emancipatory politics which rejects and is capable of overturning the
pervasive “there is no alterative” “realism” of neo-liberal ideology.
3
We examine the example of the La Via Campsina and their call for food sovereignty as a
potential instance of an emerging radical subjectivity and emancipatory political ideal that
entails a fundamental change in the basis of modern, neo-liberal market society and the
instantiation of a radical egalitarianism and social democratic praxis. In order to determine
whether La Via Campesina and the call for food sovereignty offers more than a reactionary
politics, we attempt to reconstruct the material ethics of food sovereignty to determine
whether it is founded upon a substantive moral discourse that transcends rural worker and
small framer’s localised struggles. We evaluate three key dimensions of La Via Campesina’s
attempt to re-politicise global food production: its radical democracy basis, the invoking of
the notion of sovereignty, and human rights.
The realist turn in environmental politics
As environmentalist agendas have become increasingly integrated into mainstream public
debate there has been a discernable shift away from the radical – often anti-modernist or
anti-capitalist - rhetoric that characterised the economic dimension of many early
environmental perspectives and a concordant move towards the affirmation of marketbased mechanisms for ecological protection and conservation. Despite Green thinking’s
traditional affinity with the Left, recent years has seen a proliferation of voices championing
market-based solutions to ecological decline of a sort that are more commonly associated
with the political Right. Certainly, at the level of national and international policy, the vast
majority of strategies adopted for addressing environmental problems are conducted in and
through market instruments and terminology. Some of the most prominent approaches to
environmental issues are couched in the language of economic theory: risk, property rights,
carbon trade and/or tax regimes, cost-benefit analysis, eco-system services, “natural
capital”, and the notion of “environmental stakeholders”.
“If the first wave of
environmentalism was framed around conservation and the second around regulation,” Van
Jones famously said, “we believe the third wave will be framed around investment.” 2
Although market-based approaches to ecological problem-solving have long been an
important feature of modern environmentalist discourse, recent decades have seen an
important shift in the ways in which such approaches are presented and defended. What
2 Schellenberger, Michael. And Ted Nordhaus. “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a PostEnvironmental World.” Environmental Grantmakers Association, October 2004,
http://thebreakthrough.org/PDF/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf.
4
we might call the “realist turn” in environmental discourse refers to a discernable shift in the
very macro-framework of the debate; a shift that is characterised by the increasing
acceptance of capitalism as the ultimate background and zero-point for environmental
problem-solving. “Realists” are those who (wearily) understand that capitalism is implicated
in human degradation of the “natural” world, but who also accept that capitalism is the only
game in town. The urgency of addressing global ecological decline, so the story goes,
demands that we engage with the existing tools (however imperfect) that lie to hand.
Beginning from a demand for radical social transformation and a revolutionary restructuring
of the global economy is a utopian pipedream and a dangerously idealistic distraction from
the messy business of addressing a seemingly ever expanding range of pressing issues that
require immediate engagement. In this context, being “realistic” about what is possible
entails two core beliefs: (1) that the imperatives of the market and the “laws” of supply and
demand are natural, immutable and unavoidable; consequently (2) environmental crises
cannot be fully averted, but only adequately managed. This “realism” reifies existing
market-relations
and
while
simultaneously
marginalising
alternative
eco-political
perspectives – discourses that Backstrand and Lovbrand have referred to as “civic
environmentalisms” - which explicitly attempt to (re)politicise ecological issues. 3
The reformulation of the debate along realist-utopian lines is highly evident in recent
discussions regarding climate change. Foster et al point out that the Stern Review of 2007 –
often touted as one of the most important analyses of the economics of global warming comprehensively ruled out the possibility of very rapid emissions cuts since this was not
“economically viable”; it would be impossible to achieve these cuts while maintaining
economic growth. 4 The rationale of Stern Review encapsulates the first sense of realism that
underpins a political/capitalist realist position: what we might call market-realism - a firm
belief that economic imperatives are unalterable, overwhelming even the “objective”
requirements of climate science. This is a strange inversion indeed: transhistorical laws of
nature are presented as being less immutable than a set of historically contingent (and
contested!) socio-economic relations.
3
Bäckstrand, Karin. and Eva Lövbrand. “Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change: Contested Discourses of Ecological
Modernization, Green Governmentality and Civic Environmentalism”. Global Environmental Politics 6:1, February 2006. And,
"Climate Governance beyond 2012: Competing Discourses of Green Governmentality, Ecological Modernization and Civic
Environmentalism". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention,
Hilton Chicago, CHICAGO, IL, USA, Feb 28, 2007. 2009-05-24 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p179129_index.html
4
Foster, John Bellamy. Brett Clark and Richard York. “Ecology: The Moment of Truth – An Introduction”, Monthly Review
July-August 2008, Volume 60, Number 3.
5
This sense of being “realistic” about what can be achieved is echoed by international
relations scholar David Victor. In a recent article for the Guardian newspaper about the
United Nations formal talks on climate change, Victor claimed that the UN needs to “shift
focus to what is really achievable”, and attempt to build agreements that are “realistic and
credible” rather than focusing on trying to secure an agreement that is in line with
“abstract” and “unrealistic” goals such as stopping global warming at 2°C. Victor argued that
the UN needs to deal with the “reality that lots of climate change is inevitable”, and that the
primary concern should be how countries can adapt to this new reality. 5 Victor’s position is
interesting because he clearly lays out the second sense of “realism” that emerges from first
(market/capitalist realism): a quasi-fatalistic resignation towards the supposed inevitability
of environmental crises. We cannot fully prevent these things from happening; the best we
can hope for is to mitigate their worst effects. 6
Ecological Modernisation
The divarication of the environmental debate into realist-idealist camps needs to be
understood in the context of the rise of ecological modernisation (EM). EM is principally,
but not solely, a European phenomenon which has emerged over the past two decades to
become a major perspective in much of environmental decision-making and, although not
strictly hegemonic, currently occupies a dominant position within the sphere of
environmental policy-making in UK and EU governmental discourse. 7 Highly simplified, EM
refers to a collection of technocratic, production-oriented eco-efficiency policy discourses
that are based upon the simple shared hypothesis that human degradation of ecological
systems can be de-coupled from economic growth, and that capitalism and industrialism can
be made more ecological “friendly” through the implementation of market based
mechanisms which are structured through systems of regulation, investment and trade. 8
Within this perspective, the antagonistic relationship between the biosphere and capitalist
economies – as posited by, for example Gaia theory, the limits to growth thesis, and ecosocialist accounts - is substituted for a theory of “green growth. Accordingly, in the place of
demands for radical transformative socio-economic change, EM advocates beginning with
5
Victor, David. “Why the UN can never stop climate change”. guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 April 2011 11.56 BST.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/04/un-climate-change. accessed 14.04.11
6
Indeed adaption to and mitigation of the effects of climate change is often portrayed as a more “effective" solution – particularly
in the short term - to the problem than lowering green house gas emissions. While immediate adaptation is clearly a key issue,
especially for those who are already affected by changing climate (predominately the global poor), to focus on adaptation to the
effects of climate change without an accompanying serious commitment to addressing the underlying anthropogenic causes of
climate change is to operate purely at the level of the symptom.
7 See Hajer, Maarten A. The Politics of Environmental Discourses: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Clarendon
Press: Oxford, 1995) pp. 30,
8?
6
moderate reform. As Andrew Blowers has observed, “the difference between EM and those
who advocate revolutionary change is the difference between the environmental challenge
being a moment of transition … and it being a potential moment of transformation.” 9 EM’s
rise to prominence inside the policy sphere is linked to its presenting a “win-win” approach
to economic growth and environmental degradation. Mol and Spaargaren have argued that
the emergence of EM was partly due to a “polarising” debate in the 1980’s and 1990’s,
which was dominated by notions of de-industrialisation at one end of the spectrum and neoMarxist/eco-socialist positions at the other. 10
Warner points out that EM posed a
“compromise solution”; a “positive, pragmatic discourse capable of countering the
pessimism of techo-sceptics and the apocalyptic visions of the world’s end pose by the Limits
to Growth published in 1972.” 11
The ostensibly practical character of EM has been emphasised in the work of Robyn
Eckersley as well as John Barry and Peter Doran, who have recently argued for EM on
pragmatic grounds.
Barry and Doran have argued that the economic component of
traditional green analyses were “largely utopian—usually based on an argument for the
complete transformation of society and economy as the only way to deal with ecological
catastrophe, often linked to a critique of the socio-economic failings of capitalism that
echoed a broadly radical Marxist/socialist or anarchist analysis.” 12 In contrast they claim to
offer a “realistic, but critical, version of green political economy to underpin the economic
dimensions of radical views of sustainable development.” 13
Despite agreeing that
“realistically the only long term option available is radical”, they maintain that the
emergence and viability of this project is tempered by the raw pragmatic necessity of having
to begin work with the tools that are to hand. “We cannot build or seek to create a
sustainable economy ab nihilo, but must begin—in an agonistic fashion—from where we
are, with the structures, institutions, modes of production, laws, regulations and so on that
we have.” 14
Barry and Doran’s “realist” position explicitly denies the possibility of beginning with
transformative social change that fundamentally reformulates the structure of consumer
capitalism.
9
Blowers, Andrew. “Environmental Policy: Ecological Modernisation or Risk Society?”,Urban Studies, 34: 5-6, 1997. pp. 847
10 Mol, A.P.J. and Spaargaren, G., 2000. “Ecological modernization theory in debate: a
Review”. Environmental Politics, 9 (1), 17–49.
11
Warner (2010) pp. 545
12 Barry & Doran (2006) pp. 250
13 Ibid. pp 251
14 Ibid
7
‘The realistic character of the thinking behind this article accepts that
consumption and materialistic lifestyles are here to stay. (The most we can
probably aspire to is a widening and deepening of popular movements towards
ethical consumption, responsible investment, and fair trade.) And indeed there
is little to be gained by proposing alternative economic systems which start
from a complete rejection of consumption and materialism. The appeal to
realism is in part an attempt to correct the common misperception (and selfperception) of green politics and economics requiring an excessive degree of
self-denial and a puritanical asceticism.’ 15
For Barry and Doran, the boundary of the immediately possible is quite clearly circumscribed
by the dictate of a particular configuration of social relations and the attendant value
systems bound up with them. Conspicuous consumption and materialistic lifestyles are
rendered as immutable facts that simply cannot be directly challenged; it is more realistic to
imagine the end of the world via eco-armageddon. 16 In contrast, the “most that we can
aspire to” turns out to be a slightly “greener” more “ethical” version of consumer capitalism:
what Žižek has called “capitalism with a human face”. In this way, the politically possible is
reduced to a (hopefully) slightly more humane version of the very system from which the
problems themselves have emerged. In claiming that consumption and “materialism” are
here to stay, these historically contingent features of a particular configuration of social
relations are presented as unavoidable and inevitable. In this sense, these relations – and
their attendant values – are bestowed with a quasi-mythical status as unavoidable
characteristics of the human condition that need to be accepted and worked around; in a
word, these relations/values are naturalised.
Ecological modernisation and “post-environmentalism” as post-politics
EM lays claim to a market/political realism on the basis of an ostensibly no-nonsense, winwin pragmatism that reformulates the very framework of environmentalist debate by
presenting market-driven technological solutions, “coordinated” and “steered” by the state,
as the only “realistic” options on the table. In so doing, EM fundamentally challenges the
economy-environment contradiction that has long been held as a central thesis of
environmental thinking. EM thus embodies a necessitarian “there is not alternative” logic
15 Ibid. pp. 252. Our emphasis.
16 Although Barry and Doran clearly reject the notion of “blueprint” utopia they try to retain a space for the utopian goals of an
ecological society by recourse to David Harvey’s notion of utopianism of process, arguing that EM could be a jumping off point
for more radical approaches to green political economy.
8
which insists that the market is not simply the best solution but the only one available. In so
doing, EM effectively de-politicises ecological problems by reinforcing an understanding of
the economy as a neutral, apolitical sphere which is beyond the control of organised social
forces. This “realism” naturalises and reifies existing market-relations and the notion of the
“competition state” while simultaneously marginalising alternative eco-political perspectives
on the basis of their alleged technical inferiority. This apparent reconciliation between
capitalism and ecology has worked to depoliticise their very relationship. Ingolfur Blühdorn
and Ian Welsh explain: “as the reassuring belief in the compatibility and interdependence of
democratic consumer capitalism and ecological sustainability has become hegemonic,
different and perhaps counter-intuitive lines of enquiry are not particularly popular. They
appear disturbing, even counter-productive.” 17 In this way, EM’s rise to dominance has
contributed to the “pacification of eco-political conflicts surrounding the assumed
incompatibility of consumer capitalism and ecological sustainability. The transformation this
implied for eco-movements and eco-politics in western consumer democracies has been
described and discussed as the ‘end of environmentalism’.” 18
EM and the ‘end of environmentalism’ are best understood as species of what Žižek has
called “post-politics”. For Žižek, post-politics is ‘that which claims to leave behind old
ideological struggles and, instead, focus on expert management and administration… once
one renounces big ideological causes, what remains is only the efficient administration of
life... almost only that. 19
In this way, ‘the depoliticized, socially objective, expert
administration and coordination of interests’ becomes ‘the zero-level of politics’; in this
situation only fear – the basic component of today’s subjectivity - can introduce the passion
necessary to actively mobilise people. 20 Žižek argues that what defines post-political ideas
are that they are “ideas that work”; that is, they work well within an established framework
of existing relations.
21
In this sense, we can read EM’s emphasis on practicality and
efficacious pragmatism as epitomising precisely the kind of ideas that are defined and
defended by reference the fact that they work.
EM and the “realist” perspective it embodies is, therefore, a striking example of what Žižek
calls the ‘politics of the possible’, where a particular constellation of relationships is
17
Blühdorn, Ingolfur and Welsh, Ian(2007) 'Eco-politics beyond the paradigm of sustainability: A conceptual framework and
research agenda', Environmental Politics, 16: 2, pp. 186
18
Ibid. pp. 195
19
Žižek, Slavoj. Violence, London: Profile Books. 2008. pp. 34
20
Ibid
21
Žižek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject. London: Verso. 1999. pp. 236
9
accepted in advance as determining that which works. In contrast, Žižek argues that
authentic politics is precisely the ‘art of the impossible’, that which changes the parameters
of what is considered possible by changing ‘the very framework that determines how things
work’. 22 For Žižek, politics proper is precisely the raising of particular demands that are
deemed “impossible” within the existing order, elevating them to the level of the universal.
A situation only becomes politicised when a ‘particular demand starts to function as a
metaphoric condensation of the global opposition against Them, those in power, so that the
protest is no longer actually just about that demand, but about the universal dimension that
resonates in that particular demand…’ 23 On the other hand, what post-politics works to
prevent is exactly ‘the metaphoric universalisation of particular demands: post-politics
mobilizes the vast apparatus of experts, social workers, and so on, to reduce the overall
demand (complaint) of a particular group to just this demand, with its particular
content….’ 24 Environmentalism thus sheds its universalist pretensions and becomes the basis
of particularised identity-politics. In their own way, Schellenberger and Nordhaus pick up on
this problem, recognising that in many cases environmentalists have become simply one
more special interest group, commanding broad, but often “frighteningly shallow” support
from the public. 25 This superficiality can in part be explained by understanding capitalist
ideology as consisting in precisely the over-valuing of the power of belief. By recognising
that the collective effect of our individualised actions is the degradation of the ecological
conditions of human existence one can affect a cynical distance from the problem.
Confident that we really know what’s going on, one’s ecological conscience is salved.
However, as Žižek rightly argues, ‘cynical distance is just one way… to blind ourselves to the
structural power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we
keep and ironical distance, we are still doing them.’ 26
In seeking to understand the “realist turn” to post-politics in environmental discourses the
first thing that needs to be recognised is that the prevalence of this kind of market and
political “realism” is clearly not an peculiarity of environmentalist discourse, but a central
feature of neo-liberal capitalism, which, according to Mark Fisher, has successfully
naturalized itself as an ideological position by eliminating:
22
Ibid. pp. 236
Ibid . pp. 243
Ibid
25
Schellenberger, Michael, and Ted Nordhaus. “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a PostEnvironmental World.” Environmental Grantmakers Association, October 2004,
http://thebreakthrough.org/PDF/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf.
26
Žižek, Slavoj. Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989. pp 39
23
24
10
the very category of value in the ethical sense. Over the past thirty years,
capitalist realism has successfully installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is
simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education,
should be run as a business. 27
Mark Fisher’s characterisation of capitalist realism may be productive in helping us to
understand the prevalence of the “market panacea” in contemporary environmental
discourses, why this “realism” needs to be challenged and how we might begin to do so.
Fisher describes capitalist realism as ‘the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the
only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine
a coherent alternative to it.’ 28 It is ‘a pervasive atmosphere conditioning not only the
production of culture but also the regulation of work and education… acting as a kind of
invisible barrier constraining though and action.’ 29 As Žižek has argued, “the horizon of social
imagination no longer allows us to entertain the idea of an eventual demise of capitalism…
everybody tacitly accepts that capitalism is here to stay…” 30
In this context it is perhaps unsurprising that impending ecological disaster is predominantly
treated as another problem for which the fix-all “market panacea” is the obvious solution.
However, as Žižek has pointed out, despite global capitalism’s evident ability to transform
ecology into a new market-space for capitalist investment and competition, the very nature
of what we call “the environmental problem” eludes complete and seamless incorporation
into the status quo; it remains (for the moment) antagonistic. 31 Fisher argues that this
treatment of environmental issues, their
incorporation into advertising and marketing… illustrates… the fantasy structure
on which capitalist realism depends: a presupposition that resources are
infinite, that the earth itself is merely a husk which capital can at a certain point
slough off like used skin, and that any problem can be solved by the market.’ 32
27
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, London: Zero Books, 2009, p. 17.
Ibid. p. 2.
29
Ibid, pp. 16.
30
Žižek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject. London: Verso, 1999. pp. 261
31
http://www.lacan.com/Žižekecology1.html
32
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Zero Books, 2009, p. 18.
28
11
The real implications of environmental catastrophe are ‘too traumatic to be assimilated into
the system.’ 33 The ecological contradictions of capitalist societies thus elude complete
ideological integration; the totalising ideological veil of capitalist realism is temporarily
pierced by (amongst other things) the threat of ecological Armageddon. In this sense, Fisher
argues that ecological antagonisms have the capacity to open a window of critique which
can act as an entry point for (re)politicisation.
While Fisher’s notion of capitalist realism is helpful in describing the ideological shift that has
occurred in the West since the End of the Cold War, his account fails to adequately theorise
neo-liberalism and to address the importance of the role played by postmodernism.34 In
what follows, we will offer a brief account of the nature of neo-liberalism as a constructivist
political project and dominant ideology in order to highlight and contextualise the origins of
the “realism” that engenders an understanding of the market as a ubiquitous remedy for
virtually every human problem.
Neo-liberalism, ideology, capitalist realism
Neo-liberalism has a distinct and complex history which reflects a strong alliance between
pragmatism and idealism which has been dealt with in detail elsewhere. 35 For the purposes
of this paper, we draw primarily on the work of Foucault, Wendy Brown and David Harvey,
and focus on the nature of neo-liberalism as a political rationality and a pragmatic political
project. Henry Giroux describes neo-liberalism as ‘a political-economic-cultural project’
which ‘functions as a regulative force, political rationale, and a mode of governmentality.’ 36
As such neo-liberalism must be understood not simply as a set of economic practices –
introduced in the main since the 1970s and broadly associated with liberalization,
deregulation and the application of market principles to all aspects of social life – but also as
a distinct form of political rationality and a cultural/ideological project which seeks to
transform all aspects of society in line with its own vision.
33
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Zero Books, 2009, p. 18.
“Capitalist realism” is presented by Fisher as a kind of heir to postmodernism as theorised by Fredric Jameson. Fisher argues
that since the end of the Cold War the processes ‘Jameson described and analyzed have now become so aggravated and chronic
that they have gone through change in kind.’, Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Zero Books, 2009, p. 7.
35
On the origins and historical development of neo-liberalism see, for example, David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-liberalism,
Oxford University Press, 2005, Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics; Lectures at the Collége de France 1978-1979, trans.
Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, first published in French by Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard, 2004, and Jamie Peck,
‘Geography and public policy: constructions of neo-liberalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 28, 3 (2004) pp. 392-405.
36
Henry A. Giroux, ‘Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neo-liberalism in the New Gilded Age’, Social Identities,
Vol. 14, No. 5, September 2008, pp. 587-620, p. 589.
34
12
As early as 1979 Foucault recognised the radical and transformative nature of neoliberalism, which seeks ‘to extend the rationality of the market, the schemas of analysis it
offers and the decision making criteria it suggests, to domains which are not exclusively or
not primarily economic: the family and the birth rate, for example, or delinquency and penal
policy.’ 37 Born of what Foucault describes as ‘a crisis of liberalism’, prompted by the Great
Depression, neo-liberalism ‘manifests itself in a number of re-evaluations, re-appraisals, and
new projects in the art of government.’ 38 What is at stake in neo-liberalism is ‘whether a
market economy can in fact serve as the principle, form, and model for a state.’ 39 What is at
stake politically in all of this is, of course, precisely ‘the problem of the survival of
capitalism.’ 40
Drawing on Foucault’s work, Wendy Brown argues that:
neo-liberalism is not simply a set of economic policies; it is not only about facilitating
free trade, maximizing corporate profits, and challenging welfarism. Rather, neoliberalism carries a social analysis that, when deployed as a form of governmentality,
reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices of empire.
Neo-liberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily
focused on the economy; it involves extending and disseminating market values to all
institutions and social action, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player.
41
As Brown argues, neo-liberalism ‘is a constructivist project: it does not presume the
ontological givenness of a thoroughgoing economic rationality for all domains of society but
rather takes as its task the development, dissemination, and institutionalization of such a
rationality.’ 42 Neo-liberalism aims not only at reconfiguring the human being as homo
œconomicus but at ensuring that ‘all dimensions of human life are cast in terms of a market
rationality.’ 43 In order to realise this constructivist aim in the context of ecology, the
antagonistic relationship between capitalism and “nature” first needs to be pacified. The
“realist turn” facilitated by EM (among other things) does precisely this.
37
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics; Lectures at the Collége de France 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008, first published in French by Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard, 2004, p. 323.
38
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics; Lectures at the Collége de France 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008, first published in French by Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard, 2004, p. 69.
39
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics; Lectures at the Collége de France 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008, first published in French by Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard, 2004, p. 117.
40
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics; Lectures at the Collége de France 1978-1979, trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008, first published in French by Éditions du Seuil/Gallimard, 2004, p. 164.
41
Wendy Brown, ‘Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, p. 39-40
42
Wendy Brown, ‘Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, in Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on
Knowledge and Politics, p. 40.
43
Wendy Brown, ‘Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, p. 40.
13
While seeking to radically transform the world and the subject in line with its own vision
neo-liberalism presents itself not as one possible system among many, or simply as the most
rational, but as the only possible system. As Jamie Peck argues, ‘a defining feature of neoliberalism is its necessitarian, there-is-no-alternative character and invocation of a ‘politics of
inevitability’ based on a deference to (global) economic forces.’ 44 As Žižek argues ‘capitalism
itself is presented in technical terms, not even as a science but simply as something that
works: it needs no ideological justification.’ 45 In seeking hegemonic domination neo-liberal
ideology dismisses alternative positions as ideological while presenting itself as non-ideology
or “realism”. In this sense, although it is problematic to simply reduce EM to an ecomanifestation of the neo-liberal impulse, we can see how the pragmatic “realism” – ideas
that work - which underpins the EM perspective reinforces the presentation of neo-liberal
ideology as non-ideology.
As well as a form of political rationality which foregrounds the market and competition and
presents itself as necessary, neo-liberalism must be seen as a pragmatic political project
concerned with ensuring not only the survival of capitalism but the restitution of class
power. As David Harvey argues, neo-liberalism is ‘a political project to re-establish the
conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites.’ 46 While,
according to Harvey, over the past four decades neo-liberalisation has not proved to be very
effective ‘in revitalizing global capital accumulation’ it has ‘succeeded remarkably well in
restoring, or in some instances (as in Russia and China) creating, the power of an economic
elite.’ 47 In the process neo-liberalism has ensured the vast transfer of wealth upwards to
economic elites and the vast increase in inequality both within nations and across the globe,
alongside increasing profits and worsening working and living conditions for workers in both
the North and the South. 48 For a good deal of the world’s rural poor the international neoliberal and corporate food regime 49 that emerged in the late 1970s has profoundly
undermined their means of subsistence while the prospects of securing a living wage in the
44
Jamie Peck, ‘Geography and public policy: constructions of neo-liberalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 28, 3 (2004) pp.
392-405, p. 394.
45
Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Verso, 2009, p. 25.
46
Maurizio Lazzarato, ‘Neo-liberalism in Action: Inequality, Insecurity and the Reconstitution of the Social’, Theory Culture
Society, 2009, Vol. 26 (6), pp. 109-133), p. 123-124.
47
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-liberalism p. 19.
48
See Beverly J. Silver and Giovanni Arrighi, ‘Workers North and South’, Socialist Register 2001, S. 53-76, p. 8 - 10.
49
McMichael, Philip, A food regime genealogy, Journal of Peasant Studies Volume 36, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 139 - 169
14
world’s growing urban slums is also becoming increasing less tenable 50. Jan Breman
articulates the profound structural antagonisms at the heart of this issue:
(A) point of no return is reached when a reserve army of labour waiting to be
incorporated into the labour process becomes... a permanently redundant mass, an
excessive burden that cannot be included now or in the future, in economy and society.
This metamorphosis is…the real crisis of the world.
51
This fundamental contradiction clearly undermines the free-market utopianism of the claim
that neo-liberal globalisation is uniquely capable of overcoming poverty by generating
growth in the world economy as long as free markets reign. As we argue below, not unlike
the ecological antagonisms of contemporary capitalist societies, such contradictions can
provide a focal point for establishment of counter-hegemonic social movements and
emancipatory politics.
Given that the benefits of neo-liberalisation are enjoyed by the few at the expense of the
many, how is it that it has managed to proceed and even come to be accepted? In The Shock
Doctrine, Naomi Klein uses a series of examples – from the Thatcher governments’ battle
against the minors in the UK to the restructuring of Chile under Pinochet and the war in Iraq
– to demonstrate the ways in which crises have been created, manipulated and exploited as
a means of, often violently, forcing neo-liberalisation upon unwilling populations. 52
This history of neo-liberalisation, and the impact it has on those who suffer its worst effects,
may suggest that, as Scott Lash has argued, power is now ‘largely post-hegemonic’. 53 Yet as
Richard Johnson argues, Lash’s identification of hegemony as essentially cultural is
somewhat reductive. In contrast Johnson reading of Gramsci that insists that: ‘Hegemony is
not about cultural politics alone’, rather it ‘is about the relations of superstructures to
structure, including the relation of social and cultural organization to economy, or ‘the
necessities of production.’ ’ 54 ‘Common sense’ is a key term here which is used in a non-
50
Mike Davis cites the CIA’s World Factbook of 2002, ‘By the late 1990s a staggering one
billion workers representing one-third of the world’s labour force, most of them in the
South, were either unemployed or underemployed’. Davis restates later “(T)he global informal working class…is about one
billion strong, making it the fastest-growing, and most unprecedented, social class on
earth’ (MD 2006: p199 and 178).
51
J. Breman, The Labouring Poor in India: Patterns of Exploitation, Subordination, and Exclusion. New Delhi: Oxford UP,
2003, p.13
52
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane, Penguin Books, 2007.
53
Scott Lash, ‘Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation?, Theory Culture Society, Vol. 24 (3), pp. 55-78, p. 55.
54
Richard Johnson, ‘Post-hegemony?: I Don’t Think So, Theory Culture Society, Vol. 24 (3), pp. 95-110, p. 99.
15
pejorative sense to refer to the ‘forms of consciousness that are so tied up with physical and
mental labour and local sociability that they are hard to disembed, even conceptually.’ 55
This conception of hegemony is essential to understanding the speed and success with
which neo-liberalism has established itself as hegemonic in countries like the UK in the last
30 or 40 years. While neo-liberalisation has been brutally enforced around the globe, as
David Harvey argues, at least in democratic societies, it has been accompanied by a process
of ‘constructing consent’ which has taken many forms and been promoted through various
channels including the media, state institutions and civil society. 56 This process is visible in
the example of EM, where the promotion of capitalist realist sensibilities and the attempt to
pacify the antagonistic economy-nature relationship contributes to the construction of
precisely the kind of consent – often instantiated as resignation towards the inevitability of
capitalism buttressed by cynical understanding of capitalism’s failings - that enables the neoliberal project. However, the construction of consent requires a profound shift in how
people conceive of themselves, society and the very notion of the possible. Following
Harvey, among others, we argue that the rise and normalisation of postmodernism has been
key to this process.
Postmodernism, politics and subjectivity
Following Jameson we view postmodernism as something like the ‘the cultural dominant of
the logic of late capitalism’ the emergence of which is inseparable from a ‘fundamental
mutation in the sphere of culture in the world of late capitalism.’ 57 For the purposes of this
paper the salient features of postmodernism, as they pertain to the question of its impact
upon politics and subjectivity to help to clear the way for neo-liberalism, can be summerised
as; anti-humanism; anti-universalism; cultural, moral and epistemological relativism;
individualism; the privileging of desire and emotion over reason, truth and facts; and what
Fredric Jameson refers to as “the postmodern sublime”. 58
Four of these key features, anti-humanism, anti-universalism, relativism and the postmodern
sublime are exemplified in the work of postmodernist theorist Jean-François Lyotard. 59
55
Richard Johnson, ‘Post-hegemony?: I Don’t Think So, Theory Culture Society, Vol. 24 (3), pp. 95-110, p.99.
Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-liberalism, see Chapter 2 ‘The Construction of Consent’, pp. 39-63, p. 39-40.
57
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, 1991, p. 46-47.
58
This is drawn from an argument being developed in more detail elsewhere.
59
Lyotard was the first European philosopher to use the term, which he borrowed from American critics and sociologist Lyotard,
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. xxiii.
56
16
Defining the postmodern as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ 60 Lyotard argues that the
grand narratives which had previously legitimised human knowledge have lost credibility. 61
For Lyotard the “metanarratives” of progress associated with the Enlightenment and
modernism, which found their legitimacy on universalism and the humanist notion of ‘a
future to be accomplished, that is, in an Idea to be realized’ are now defunct. 62 This project:
has not been forsaken or forgotten but destroyed, “liquidated.” There are several
modes of destruction, several names which are symbols of for them. “Auschwitz” can
be taken as a paradigmatic name for the tragic “incompletion” of modernity… It is the
crime opening postmodernity… How can grand narratives of legitimation still have
credibility in these circumstances?
63
These narrative have ceded to what he refers to as “language games” and ‘the pragmatics of
knowledge’ 64 where legitimacy springs from ‘linguistic practice and communicational
interaction.’ 65 Lyotard’s epistemological relativism leads him to reject the legitimacy of any
narrative that might ground collective intellectual or political human endeavour. Defending
his position with reference to the horrors of the twentieth century he argues, that ‘there is
no question of proposing a “pure” alternative to the system’ since we all know ‘that any
attempt at an alternative of that kind would end up resembling the system it was meant to
replace.’ 66 In response to what he sees as the horrors of modernity, Lyotard he proposes
that we ‘wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unrepresentable; let us activate the
differences and save the honour of the name.’ 67 He celebrates our inability to understand
and represent the world – the postmodern sublime – and rejects the idea that we might
strive to change it along with the conception of humanity as collective subject which seeks
‘common emancipation’. 68 As Jameson argues, Lyotard’s position amounts to a rejection of
the idea ‘that something beyond capitalism is possible’ and to a delegitimation of the very
foundations upon which ‘political militants seek to bring that radically different future into
being.’ 69
60
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. xxiv.
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. 37.
62
Letter to Samuel Cassin, 6 February 1984, in Jean François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence
1982-1985, Turnaround, 1992, first published in French in 1986, pp. 29-32, p. 29-30.
63
Letter to Samuel Cassin, 6 February 1984, in Jean François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence
1982-1985, Turnaround, 1992, first published in French in 1986, pp. 29-32, p. 30-31.
64
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. 60 -61.
65
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. 41.
66
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. 66.
67
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. 82.
68
See Lyotard’s repost to Habermas. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, p. 65-67. On the postmodern
sublime see p. 77-81.
69
Fredric Jameson, Forward to Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, pp. vii – xxi, p. xix
61
17
For Žižek, politics proper is “the moment in which a particular demand is not simply part of
the negotiation of interests, but aims at something more, and starts to function as the
metaphoric condensation of the global restructuring of the entire social space.” 70 The
postmodern rejection of universalism delimits the space of the political as an arena in which
groups and individuals vie for recognition within a differentiated field of competing
interests, while relativism undermines our ability to judge between such claims. The
contemporaneous rise of identity politics may be seen as the political correlative of the antifoundational and anti-universal thrust of postmodern theory and the deeply commodified
late capitalist society. Instead of the raising of particular demands to the level of the
universal, identity politics is “precisely the assertion of one’s particular identity, of one’s
proper place within the social structure.” 71 Every group can be assigned a place and
accounted for; “lifestyle” identities are easily reconfigured into an endlessly expanding
plurality of micro-consumer markets and isolated special interest groups. The ground upon
which unified counter-hegemonic political struggle might be waged is rendered both fluid
and fragmented, breaking apart and reforming in an endless series of politically impotent
formations.
This politics of difference and differentiation occupies the symbolic space of the political but
in refusing to contemplate the radical restructuring of society tacitly accepts that existing
social relations are immutable delimiting the space of the political and narrowing our
horizons of the possible. The “realism” of postmodern theory mirrors but also helps to make
way for the “realism” of neo-liberalism; “there is no alternative”. If we accept that capitalism
is here to stay, and deny all grounds upon which it can or should be challenged, the way is
opened for the instantiation of a more fully capitalist ethos. In this way, postmodernism can
be seen to have had a formative role in clearing the way for neo-liberalism, creating a void
into which its market values and necessitarian ethos have been projected.
Alongside the narrowing of the scope of the political the question of subjectivity is key to
understanding the impact of postmodernism and its role in constructing consent for the
neo-liberal project. For Jameson postmodernism has a specific function within the context of
the changing requirements of capitalism. Its ‘fundamental ideological task’ is ‘that of
coordinating new forms of practice and social and mental habits… with new forms of
70
71
Žižek. 1999. pp. 248
Žižek. 1999. pp. 248-249
18
economic production and organization thrown up by the modification of capitalism…’ 72 This
is a “cultural revolution” directed at producing “new people;” ‘capable of functioning in a
very peculiar socioeconomic world.’ 73
The postmodern subject appears in the work of postmodernism theorist Jean Baudrillard,
but also in that Mark Fisher, as an over stimulated, distracted and incapable receptacle for
everything and anything that consumer capitalism wants to throw at it, atomised and unable
to communicate let alone act as the agent of radical emancipatory politics. 74 Similarly in
Jameson’s account the subject of this new order appears to be frozen in an intractable
impasse by what he refers to as ‘the postmodern sublime’ – a term that refers to the
perplexing world of late or neo-liberal capitalism, characterised as a the bewilderingly
complex nexus of new forms of technology and the global economic system, and to our
inability to either understand or act politically in this world. 75 In the postmodern age it is,
therefore, not only the foundations upon which a radical politics might be built but the
possibility of the emergence of an agent of any such politics that is pulled into question and
found to be wanting. 76
More recent work on the neo-liberal subject suggests that Jameson’s “new people” are
required to be flexible and entrepreneurial; they need to be freed from the belief in a
benevolent and paternalistic state that will see them right ‘from cradle to grave’, as well as
the illusion that radical social change is possible; they need to accept personal responsibility
and to accept that those who fail must bear the consequences of that failure. 77 Henry Giroux
writes that the acceptance of the following set of orthodoxies is fundamental to the
construction of the neo-liberal subject:
the public sphere, if not the very notion of the social, is a pathology; consumerism is the
most important obligation of citizenship; freedom is an utterly privatized affair that
72
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, 1991, p. xiv.
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, 1991, p. xv.
74
Baudrillard, for example, argues that in this era of communication, the only strategy left for the masses is that of refusal ‘the
current argument of the system is to maximise speech, the maximum production of meaning. Thus strategic resistance is that of
the refusal of meaning and of the spoken word.’ Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Implosion of
Meaning in the Media’, Simulacra and Simulation, The University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 79-86, p. 85-86.
75
On the postmodern sublime see Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, 1991,
particularly p. 36-38 and 49.
76
See for example Jean Baudrillard ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’, in Postmodern Culture, Hal Foster (ed.), Pluto Press,
1985, pp. 126-134 and Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Implosion of Meaning in the Media’, Simulacra and Simulation, The University of
Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 79-86.
77
See Wendy Brown, ‘Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No
Alternative?, Zero Books, 2009, Henry A. Giroux, ‘Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neo-liberalism in the New
Gilded Age’, Social Identities, Vol. 14, No. 5, September 2008, pp. 587-620 and Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neo-liberal
Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press, 2009.
73
19
legitimates the primacy of property rights over public priorities; the social state is bad;
all public difficulties are individually determined; and all social problems, now
individualized, can be redressed by private solutions.
78
The citizen-subject of the neo-liberal state is then distinct from that of the welfare state and,
as Jodi Dean argues, this poses a specific problem for the left,
namely, the change in the subject positions available for political deployment. Whereas
the Keynesian welfare state interpellated subjects into specific symbolic identities (such
as the worker, the housewife, the student, or the citizen), neo-liberalism relies on
imaginary identities. Not only do the multiplicity and variability of such identities
prevent them from serving as loci of a political action but their inseparability from the
injunctions of consumerism reinforces capitalism’s grip.
79
Instead of interpellating subjects with symbolically anchored identities, neo-liberal ideology
‘enjoins subjects to develop our creative potential and cultivate our individuality… have a
good time, have it all, be happy, fit, and fulfilled.’ 80 It is then not simply the lowering of
expectations but the imperative of competitive self-creation and the pursuit of individual
“happiness” – which amounts to the satisfaction of acquiring more money and things than
your neighbours – that forms the neo-liberal subject as self-entrepreneur and consumer.
There are of course two sides to this demand for the pursuit of individual happiness and
success. As Giroux argues, on the one hand, there are the excesses of conspicuous
consumption ‘now on display in all of the major media as the referent of the good life’
where ‘the obscenely wealthy offer up a seemingly inexhaustible spectacle of greed and
decadence…’ 81 On the other hand, there is a ‘biopolitics of disposability’ which responds to
deepening inequality through draconian measures and the criminalization of social problems
while breeding;
a culture of fear and suspicion to all others – immigrants, refugees, Muslims, youth
minorities of class and color, and the elderly – who in the absence of dense social
78
Henry A. Giroux, ‘Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neo-liberalism in the New Gilded Age’, Social Identities,
Vol. 14, No. 5, September 2008, pp. 587-620, p. 591.
79
Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neo-liberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke
University Press, 2009, p. 51
80
Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neo-liberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics, Duke University Press,
2009, p. 67.
81
Henry A. Giroux, ‘Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neo-liberalism in the New Gilded Age’, Social Identities,
Vol. 14, No. 5, September 2008, pp. 587-620, p. 595-596.
20
networks and social supports fall prey to unprecedented levels of displaced resentment
from the media, public scorn for their vulnerability, and increased criminalization
because they are both considered dangerous and unfit for integration into American
society.
82
As we will go on to explore when we turn to analyse La Via Campesina and the Food
Sovereignty Movement, this politics deems ‘some lives, if not whole groups, disposable and
redundant.’ 83
Neo-liberalism constructs consent through both, on the one hand, the lowering of
expectations and, on the other, the seductions of consumerism, the notion of individual
freedom and the promise that we too may one day become “winners”. The picture emerges
of the neo-liberal subject an as atomised, depoliticised and hollow, a “realists” who joins
Lyotard in at least accepting, if not celebrating, our inability to understand let alone change
the world. What Mark Fisher describes as ‘capitalist realism’ is the cultural and ideological
situation we find ourselves in after the normalization of postmodernism and the successful
projection of neo-liberal market values into the void it has created. 84
In this seemingly post-political moment and in the face of the apparently totalising grip of
neo-liberal ideology how do we reinvent/reinvigorate the space for politics proper? Žižek’s
way out of the impasse of post-politics draws on Badiou’s notion of the Event. There are,
however, a number of problems with this conception of emancipatory politics. Despite the
apparently all-pervasive grip of neo-liberal ideology, as Brown suggests, ‘it is wrong to see
the population as entirely interpellated by neo-liberal governance’. In fact ‘a lot of people
mange and navigate around neo-liberalism without necessarily ingesting its values as their
own. There is a chafing there; there is an opening, an interval here.’ 85 Here Brown points to
a conceptualisation of the situation which avoids totalisation. Returning to the concept of
hegemony we need to remember that, as Raymond Williams argues; ‘A lived hegemony is
always a process…it does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually
to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited,
altered, challenged by pressures not all of its own.’ 86 Elsewhere Brown argues that we need
82
Henry A. Giroux, ‘Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neo-liberalism in the New Gilded Age’, Social Identities,
Vol. 14, No. 5, September 2008, pp. 587-620, p. 600-601.
83
Henry A. Giroux, ‘Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neo-liberalism in the New Gilded Age’, Social Identities,
Vol. 14, No. 5, September 2008, pp. 587-620, p. 594.
84
Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Zero Books, 2009, p. 2.
85
‘Interview with Wendy Brown’ http://www.brokenpowerlines.com/?p=12, accessed 23 April 2011, unpaginated.
86
Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press, 1977, p.112
21
to begin to build ‘an alternative vision of the good, one that rejects homo œconomicus as
the norm of the human and rejects this norms correlative formations of economy, society,
state and (non)morality.’ 87 We might refer to this alternative vision as a ‘counter-hegemony’
described by Johnson ‘as a collective desire and will’ which ‘will develop from local
adaptations, always in the light of pressing necessities of more general kind.’ 88
La Via Campesina and the food sovereignty movement
In order to begin to concretely examine the kinds of radical political subjectivities and
imaginaries that have emerged to oppose the predominance of neoliberalism, in this, the
final section of our paper, we will look briefly at the world’s largest international small
farmer and peasant’s movement La Via Campesina and its principle of food sovereignty. The
focus here will be on whether, if at all, Via Campesina’s intervention and the core principles
of food sovereignty represent an authentic and radical alternative vision of the good life;
perhaps even offering a glimpse of a burgeoning revolutionary movement. Indeed, for
Rajeev Patel, in contrast to both liberal and Marxists theorists’ consignment of peasantry to
the ash heap of history, Via Campesina and the principle of food sovereignty constitute the
foremost radical political movement in the world, representing, in his words ‘(t)he most
systematic and comprehensive organic and living alternative to existing hegemonies’ that we
have. 89
If Patel is right and the idea of food sovereignty constitutes a set of principles or outlook
upon which (whether explicitly or implicitly) to radically restore the political in today’s
constellation, it is important that we carefully trace and distinguish food sovereignty’s
reactionary dimensions (those that seek merely to conserve a ‘peasant’ way of life or simply
moderate the dominant political rationalities and values that already over-determine the
problem); and its more radical transformative demands that hinge on bolder, universal and
emancipatory ideals and praxis founded on an entirely new framework and field of
possibility. Zizek articulates the distinction between these two political modalities in terms
of right and leftwing ideals. He admonishes the repressive characteristic of right wing
reactionary politics that emerges from an attempt to protect against ongoing capitalist
expansion by “insisting on a particular communal identity (ethnos or habitat)”. In contrast,
for the left, he says, “the dimension under threat is that of politiscisation, of articulating
87
Wendy Brown, ‘Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, in Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on
Knowledge and Politics, p. 40.
88
Richard Johnson, ‘Post-hegemony?: I Don’t Think So, Theory Culture Society, Vol. 24 (3), pp. 95-110, p. 107.
89
Patel, R. "International Agrarian Restructuring and the Practical Ethics of Peasant Movement Solidarity. P.90
22
‘impossible’ universal demands (‘impossible’ from within the existing space or World
Order).”
A very brief sketch of La Via Campesina will help us situate this discussion. Literally, the
peasant’s ‘ way’ or ‘path’, La Via Campesina is an autonomous 90 transnational coalition of
around 150 grass-roots peasant and small farmer member organisations representing some
300 million peasants and rural workers in 70 countries on 5 continents. 91 According to
Martinez-Torres & Rosset 92 the imperative to form a transnational organisation based
around collective defiance emanated from a growing understanding that the various local,
regional and national problems faced by small farmers and peasants worldwide, not to
mention the appalling scale and increases in world hunger 93, coalesced around common
causes and threats, the most pernicious of which operated beyond national borders.
Identifying multi-national corporations and international finance capital as the driving forces
behind the World Trade Organisation, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and free
trade agreements, Via Campesina’s critique led to the formulation of the counter-hegemonic
and unifying principle of food sovereignty that today serves as the tactical, single-point
perspective to challenge corporate “food security” and forge a shared identity that reaches
across its member organisation’s particular struggles and local contexts. 94
A minimal conception of the notion of food sovereignty as the “right of peoples to define
their own food [and] agriculture systems” 95 must be understood in contradistinction to the
thoroughly ‘realist’ development idea of food security, a 2002 definition of which runs as
follows: “Food security [is] a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical,
social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food.” 96 The idea of food
security has been lucratively embraced by neo-liberal institutions and corporate food
regimes in no small part because it is utterly silent on issues of control, production and
distribution. Food security could be attained in a dictatorship, through monopolised
90
From Peter Rosset’s, Participatory Evaluation of La Via CAmpesina “The Via Campesina is...independent of governments,
funders, political parties, NGOs and non-peasant special interests. The agenda of Via Campesina is defined by Via Campesina,
and not by any other type of actor”.
91
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=27&Itemid=44
92
María Elena Martínez-Torres; Peter M. Rosse, La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement
in Journal of Peasant StudiesJan 2010
93
Since 1974, and despite lofty Western government’s so called ‘development’ goals, world hunger has doubled – from around
500 million people to a peak of over 1.2 billion people in 2008
94
Indeed, the notion of food sovereignty appears to be reaching well beyond Via Campesina and its member’s policies. This
ranges from official state adopted positions worked out directly with small farmers in Bolivia and Mali, to direct cynical cooption
by, for example, former French President Jacques Chirac to “describe and justify the continuation of of neo-liberal farming
policies in France and Europe”. (Michael Pimbert, Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming autonomous food systems, 2008 IIED,
London P.52)
95
Declaration of Nyeleni - Web. 19 April 2011. <http://www.landaction.org/spip/spip.php?article37>.
96
FAO: Trade Reforms and Food Security - http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4671e/y4671e06.htm
23
international markets, dumping of cheap crops or food aid. Against food security then, food
sovereignty is a call for re-politicisation and solidarity under a demand for people’s active
and direct control of the production and reproduction of their most fundamental material
and common lives and prioritisation of need ahead of the realism of economic necessity (or
the logic of capital).
A problematic 2003 Via Campesina definition of food sovereignty
provides some of the essential features of the idea but also reveals some key tensions and
idiosyncrasies.
“Food sovereignty is the peoples’, Countries’ or State Unions’ RIGHT to define their
agricultural and food policy”. 97
Patel usefully clarifies the central problematic in this definition by highlighting “that the
ascription of rights to different scales of collectively...invite(s) a series of conflicts”. He notes,
moreover, that power is not only multiply contested both within and across all of these
levels or blocs, but that “(N)o one people, country or state union has a unique vision of food
policy, and to suggest that these constituencies each have simultaneous... rights is to open
the door to a great deal of contention over priority, jurisdiction and authority.” In order to
negotiate the impasse that this definition seems to entail – especially when food sovereignty
is supposed to constitute a counter-hegemonic principle - Patel argues that the definition’s
ambiguity is, in his words, “precisely the point”. 98 His formulation is that in “demanding the
creation of domains of contention that are autonomous from the imperial international
institutions responsible for neoliberal agricultural policy, the Via Campesina’s position takes
a calculated risk in the possibility of a permanent and radical agrarian politics ... without
guarantees.” As such, the success of the Via Campesina model is, he says “contingent on a
faith in a radical democratic political imaginary in which even, especially, the deepest
relations of power come to be contested publicly“. The idea then is that the concept of food
97
The definition goes on to say that “food sovereignty includes:
• Prioritizing local agricultural production in order to feed the people, access of peasants and landless people to land, water,
seeds, and credit. Hence the need for land reforms, for fighting against GMOs (Genetically Modified
Organisms), for free access to seeds, and for safeguarding water as a public good to be sustainably distributed.
• The right of farmers, peasants to produce food and the right of consumers to be able to decide what they consume, and how and
by whom it is produced.
• The right of Countries to protect themselves from too low priced agricultural and food imports.
• agricultural prices linked to production costs: they can be achieved if the Countries or Unions of States are entitled to impose
taxes on excessively cheap imports, if they commit themselves in favour of a sustainable farm
production, and if they control production on the inner market so as to avoid structural surpluses.
• The populations taking part in the agricultural policy choices.
• The recognition of women farmers’ rights, who play a major role in agricultural production and in food.”
What is food
sovereignty?http://viacampesinanorteamerica.org/en/viacampesina/temas_principales/Food%20Sovereignty%20and%20Trade.pd
f
Accessed April 10 2011
98
Patel, R. "International Agrarian Restructuring and the Practical Ethics of Peasant Movement Solidarity." P.78
24
sovereignty is both anchored and flexible. It allows for political subjectivities to emerge in
the contestation over a wide range of political spaces in different contexts anchored under a
general demand for individual and collective autonomy, self determination and solidarity as
a form of material democracy.
The idea of democracy, however, has come under heavy fire recently, not least from
theorists on the radical left. In a 2010 article in the New Left Review Žižek writes: “Badiou
was right in his claim that the name of the ultimate enemy today is not capitalism, empire or
exploitation, but democracy. It is the acceptance of ‘democratic mechanisms’ as the
ultimate frame that prevents a radical transformation of capitalist relations”.
99
. This is a
profound indictment and problem. In Žižek’s analysis we find that recourse to democracy
plays directly in to today’s post-political situation. Democracy is worse than a hollow
signifier. Far from a call to re-politicise contestable spaces; on this reading, food sovereignty
can be viewed as merely one of so many sticking plasters that will ultimately only give
capitalism a more human – and in this case small rural framer or peasant’s - face. We would
do well, however, to look at Badiou’s argument in a little more detail. In the preface to his
metapolitics, he writes; “[T]he enemy today is not called Empire or Capital. It is called
Democracy. With this term we mean not only the empty form of the ‘representative
system’, but even more the modern figure of equality, reduced to equality before the offer
of the market, rendering every individual equal to any other on the sole basis of virtually
being, like anyone else, a consumer.” This denunciation of democracy and equality are tied
intimately to the logic of capitalist realism; which is to say, in the current conjuncture, both
democracy and equality have an ersatz quality – a falsehood - that functions as both a kind
of fig-leaf for the authoritarianism of market society; and worse, is actively, enthusiastically
engaged in its production and reproduction by spellbound neo-liberal subjectivities. In a
much more recent book, Badiou qualifies his grim pronouncement when he argues that the
meaning of democracy is still best articulated by its “literal meaning...: the power of peoples
over their own existence. Politics immanent in the people...” It is for this reason he says “we
will only ever be true democrats, integral to the historic life of peoples, when we become
communists” 100. The mutual incompatibility of capitalism and genuine democracy find
particularly powerful expression in Karl Polanyi’s work. Writing against the backdrop of
Hitler’s rise to power in Nazi Germany, for Polanyi, the incompatibility between capitalism
and democracy can only be resolved in one of two ways. For Polanyi, ultimately we have a
100
Badiou. A, ‘The Democratic Emblem’ in Democracy in what State? Columbia University Press, 2011 p 15
25
choice between fascism or socialism. “Basically” he says, “there are two solutions: the
extension of the democratic principle from politics to economics, or the abolition of the
Democratic ‘political sphere’ altogether. After abolition of the democratic political sphere
only economic life remains; Capitalism as organized in the different branches of industry
becomes the whole of society. This is the Fascist solution.” 101
Objections to a direct comparison between today’s situation and the historical horrors of
fascism are well founded; however, in a world in which virtually all societies, states and
citizens have been subjugated to the regimes and logic of market instrumentality and
capitalist expansion, accumulation and dispossession that rely on the foreclosure and
suppression of alternative paths and political spaces, capitalism appears to take on more
than just a semblance of fascistic sovereignty – not least because the dominated subjects
become enthusiastic flag-wavers.
It is precisely against the monomaniacal sovereignty of capitalism that deprives so many
people of the most elementary requirements for life and neuters their substantive political
agency – neo-liberalism’s material predations and de-politicising affect - that Via
Campesina’s belligerent political demand for transformative democracy, autonomy and
people’s control – sovereignty - over their most basic means to life, should be understood.
Although for political and social theorists the notion of sovereignty in food sovereignty is
bound to raise suspicions 102, there is a clear sense in which both etymological and
theoretical analysis might also miss the rather simple, but crucial dimension of the idea of
sovereignty in food sovereignty. What the term food sovereignty means is inextricably linked
to its use; and in this way sovereignty simply seems to imply the re-instatement of the
autonomy and self determination required to ensure social and political control over the
fundamental material conditions of both bare life (existence) and living well (flourishing): to
insist that food and land are first and foremost a shared means to life. The enemy then is the
system that over-determines the de-humanising affects of the neo-liberal model for which
food and land are transformed into monopolised commodities ‘produced’ solely for profit on
101
Polanyi, K. ‘The Essence of Fascism’, in J. Lewis K. Polanyi and D.K. Kitchin (eds.) Christianity and the Social Revolution
(1936) p 392 359^94, NewYork: Charles Scribner’s.
102
The idea of sovereignty signifies amongst other things, exclusive rights over territory and population embodied in discrete
nation states and the international politics of imperial Europe. More recently, the idea of sovereignty speaks to anti colonial
liberation struggles and the fight for national self-determination; and more recently still we find a totalising unbounded
sovereignty in Hardt and Negri’s conception of Empire and the notion of the sovereign as ‘he who decides the exception’ in
Agamben’s biopolitical theory. Although all of these approaches to the question of sovereignty might well be fruitfully brought
to bear in trying to clarify and deepen an analysis of the notion of sovereignty in food sovereignty, it is beyond the scope of this
paper.
26
a world market. For Via Campesina, this does more than cause unprecedented hunger; it
strips people of their most fundamental rights.
The idea of human rights, like the idea of democracy, has been subjected to a withering
critique from both radical left and postmodern theorists. Zizek argues that a Marxist reading
of human rights as universal, abstract ideal can convincingly demonstrate “its bourgeois
ideological spin” 103. Specifically, he [zizek] says, that “universal rights are effectively the right
of white, male property-owners to exchange freely on the market, exploit workers and
woman, and exert political domination.” 104 On this reading, ‘human rights’ become false
ideological universality, masking and legitimizing “a concrete politics of Western
imperialism, military interventions and neo-colonialism” 105. For Zizek, however, this analysis
is incomplete and insufficient. Arguing first that human rights are neither pre-political –
emanating from the mere fact of existence – nor merely false ideology, Zizek’s strategy is to
show that universal human rights are fundamental to any substantive notion of politics. For
Zizek, human rights designate “the precise space of politics proper” and “amount to...the
right to universality as such – the right of a political agent to assert its radical noncoincidence with itself (in its particular identity). What Zizek is getting at here is that any
invocation of the political rights of citizens is conditional on an anterior claim of universal
‘meta-political’ rights without which he says, we “reduce politics to a post political play of
negotiation of particular interest” 106. The political act proper then is a claim to universality –
which for Zizek is of necessity radical and antagonistic. This antagonistic stance inheres in
what Badiou calls ‘ethical truths’ that unlike “consensual ethics” which, he says, “tries to
avoid divisions” is “always more or less militant and combative” 107. The logic of universality
and its emergence from the margins and ruptures in society are given clear expression in
Susan Buck-Morss’s book on Hegel and Haiti in which she writes that “a person’s non
identity with the collective allows for subterranean solidarities that have a chance of
appealing to universal, moral sentiment, the source of today’s enthusiasm and hope.” It is at
this point of non-identity, of “culture’s betrayal” that she says “common humanity” 108 comes
in to existence.
103
Slavoj Žižek. "Against Human Rights." Libcom.org. Web. 25 Apr. 2011. <http://libcom.org/library/against-human-rightszizek>
104
Ibid
105
Ibid
106
Ibid
107
Badiou, Alain. Metapolitics. London: Verso, 2005 p75
108
Buck-Morss, Susan, Susan Buck-Morss, and Susan Buck-Morss. Hegel, Haiti and Universal History. Pittsburgh, PA:
University of Pittsburgh, 2009, P133
27
But what sort of common humanity can be found in the call for food sovereignty? When Via
Campesina calls for the right of “people’s, Countries’ or State Unions...to define their
agricultural and food policy” and “demand(s) genuine agrarian reform which return their
territories to Indigenous peoples and gives landless and farming people ownership and
control of the land they work” 109, the charge of reactionary politics becomes more pressing.
Even if, as Annete Desmarais points out, “the peasant model advocated by Via Campesina
does not entail a complete rejection of modernity, technology and trade” 110 it is not clear
that there isn’t an autarkic, conservative and reactionary politics at work that hinges
fundamentally on an ethics of communitarianism and correlative cultural and moral
relativism redolent of post-modernism.
Via Campesina’s call for both peasant based
agriculture and the right of constituents at different levels within states, and in all different
parts of the world’s, to determine their own agricultural policies dependent on local
contexts raises questions about the tenability of the idea that they are invoking a claim to
universality. Perhaps what we really find in the declaration of food sovereignty is a call to
solidarity based on a highly particularistic moral charge. In other words, far from raising a
claim to universal ethical truth we find a formulation of the good which claims that food
sovereignty is always merely a relative notion particular to local configurations.
Well aware of this problem, Patel recalls Badiou’s notion of universal truth which entails
neither “totalising covering laws of ethical engagement” 111 nor a post-political relativism
that reduces rights and political engagements that might follow to the expression of
particular, localised interests or opinions. For Patel, food sovereignty’s universality is
precisely in its call for radical, democratic praxis across multiple, overlapping political and
social spaces in order to realise the most fundamental universal conditions for material and
political flourishing.
There is clearly more work required to determine whether the models of transformation and
engagement that food sovereignty entails finally embody a genuinely radical, progressive
and emancipatory political and social imaginary. Indeed, there are clearly a host of good
reasons to be thoroughly sceptical about such claims. Certainly, food sovereignty’s reliance
on a confused, paradoxical notion of sovereignty, distinctly reactionary appeals to a
109
"TLAXCALA DECLARATION OF THE VIA CAMPESINA." Virtual Saskatchewan. Web. 01 May 2011.
<http://www.virtualsask.com/via/lavia.deceng.html>
Desmarais, A.-A. (2002) ‘The Via Campesina: Consolidating an International Peasant
and Farm Movement’, Journal of Peasant Studies 29(2): 91–124.
111
Patel, R. "International Agrarian Restructuring and the Practical Ethics of Peasant Movement Solidarity. p8
110
28
nebulous agrarian populism, and un-problematised rehabilitation of liberal democratic
tropes are cause for a measure of suspicion and good deal of critical interrogation. On the
other hand, there is a clear sense in which Via Campesina and the idea of food sovereignty
represents a significant engagement with the key problematics discussed earlier in this
paper. Not only is the realism of neo-liberal political and economic rationality directly
challenged by Via Campesina, but there is a recognition that all political spaces and social
relations - form international and national arenas to communities and households – should
be re-politicised and brought under people’s control. Furthermore, although Via Campesina
and food sovereignty emerged chiefly as a response to the profound threats faced by the
world’s most marginalised and precarious rural populations, there is a marked attempt to
articulate and inspire alternative values orientated both against neoliberal, post or anti
political rationalities and subjectivities; and towards a more just, egalitarian life founded on
universal truth and human need. In the profoundly messy reality of political and social
struggles, Via Campesina’s call for food sovereignty, however theoretically problematic, has
both wide appeal and impact. The call for radical democratic praxis, and a militant culture of
constant engagement and solidarity aimed squarely at wresting back control of productive,
material, and social life from the predations, vicissitudes and rationalities of increasingly
authoritarian and imperious demands of capital, is powerfully embodied in the Via
Campesina and its demand for food sovereignty. Capitalism’s current strategies of
accumulation are increasingly marked by the marginalisation and dispossession of people in
order to feed the needs of high finance and the need for natural resources. In such
conditions, the full import of Polanyi’s insight that either fascistic capitalism or democratic
socialism are ultimately the only options becomes all the more apparent. Confronted with
this, the re-politicisation of every sphere of our social and material life along emancipatory
logics of truth, rights, and sovereignty through radical democratic practice at all levels,
becomes increasingly urgent.
29