Can capitalism be overcome?
A history of environmental exploitation fails to imagine an alternative.
There are at least two things a historian should do in a book billed as an environmental history of capitalism: Center the environment, and demonstrate an understanding of capitalism. In his new book, Profit: An Environmental History, Mark Stoll does neither.
The text is massive in scope. It begins with the earliest genus of Homo sapiens and ends aboard Jeff Bezos’ private spacecraft, progressing through a series of vignettes of the merchants, inventors and entrepreneurs Stoll writes represent “the opening of … significant new stage(s) of capitalism.” However, the figures he chooses to highlight will be new to no one: Christopher Columbus, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, among others.
Stoll, a professor of history at Texas Tech University, displays his expertise in the history of religion, commenting, for example, that Swedenborgianism and Scottish cultural norms shaped Carnegie’s career and noting that Bezos “may identify as Catholic.” It will not surprise readers to learn that the cultural and religious backgrounds of some of the world’s most prominent capitalists informed their views on both business and the environment, and Stoll makes no effort to decenter the human as he explores these connections. He may have set out to refashion himself as an environmental historian with this book, but he still relies on conventional, if not tired, methods from intellectual history.
Non-human actors and the natural environment are not the protagonists in Profit; the world’s mountain ranges, jungles and grasslands, all teeming with life, have no voice here. On the contrary, landscapes and non-human actors are rarely identified by name and more often referenced with platitudes: Humans “transform ecosystems” and “extinguish species,” mining “scarred (the environment) for many generations,” and new transportation networks “accelerated exploitation of remote resources.”
Just as non-human actors are denied a voice in Stoll’s text, so, too, are non-Western actors. From the outset, Stoll tells readers that Profit is a story of “the paths that led to, through, and out of (Western Europe and North America.)” But this framing does not justify his tendency to treat European actors as the producers of scientific knowledge and to discredit and subjugate non-Western peoples, knowledge and cultures. For example, he writes that during the Industrial Revolution, “Western science and technology dazzled the globe with their successes and achievements, while leaders of poor countries everywhere envied (the West’s) power and prosperity.”
At the same time, he is hesitant to blame Western actors for the damage they have done, writing that “the English became imperialists almost by chance.” Similarly, he treats the environmental harms of capitalism as “accidents.” He details the Torrey Canyon oil spill and mentions various mine collapses and chemical plant explosions, but fails to see them as part of a pattern.
Meanwhile, he glosses over the links between capitalism and imperialism. Corporate plantations like those that produce palm oil in Southeast Asia or timber in the Pacific Northwest merit no more than a couple of sentences, despite their being models par excellence of a system predicated on the accumulation of capital for capitalists at the expense of local ecologies and laborers.
It is unsurprising, then, that the entire text is underpinned by the idea that capitalism is a system we “cannot live without.” But this is a confusing position for Stoll to take, as he also details the centuries of environmental devastation the system has wrought worldwide — albeit with less care than he recounts the religious lineage of Scottish inventor James Watt, among other things.
The entire text is underpinned by the idea that capitalism is a system we “cannot live without.”
As he stumbles toward his conclusion, Stoll finally offers readers a villain: consumer capitalism, which he defines as “a supercharged version of capitalism … premised on selling ever more goods and services at an ever-faster pace.” Still, he does not think we should do away with consumer capitalism, writing with unfounded alarmism that “if it slows or stops, dislocation, unemployment, unrest, and wars (will) plague the earth.”
He suggests that consumer capitalism “needs to take a different path” and that it may already be doing so as people “transition from buying stuff to buying other things.” Stoll writes that consuming experiences rather than items may somehow help solve the problem of capitalism’s environmental destruction. Bafflingly, however, one of his examples of such an experience is a cruise. It’s difficult to imagine a more environmentally destructive experience than a fuel-guzzling, waste-belching floating vacation operated by corporations that skirt environmental regulations with almost total impunity.
Not only does Stoll fail to put forward a coherent critique of capitalism or offer credible solutions to its problems, but he neglects to entertain alternative systems. He settles for briefly claiming that “twentieth-century state socialism stands thoroughly discredited.” (He does not do this himself.) He also devotes a few sentences to the subsistence communes popular in Oregon and California in the 1960s and ’70s, only to conclude that “almost none … lasted long.” His dismissal of them ignores the fact that they did not dwindle because they were inherently untenable but because capitalism made them so. He does not provide case studies of the communes or other alternative projects that have sought to reject capitalism and foster environmental and social justice. Perhaps if he had, Profit would be a richer text.
By treating capitalism as something that cannot be overcome, Stoll does a disservice to the environment he ostensibly cares for through his work. Profit is a failure of imagination at a time, as Stoll himself demonstrates, that our world most needs the opposite.
Marianne Dhenin is a disabled journalist covering social and environmental justice and politics.
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