WTF is Social Ecology
Article: Usufruct Collective. Illustration: Bella Harter.
From climate change, deforestation, the destruction of biodiversity and habitats, ocean acidification, air, water and soil pollution, and beyond, the world is undergoing a colossal ecological crisis. If business as usual continues without sufficient opposition and alternatives, disasters will continue to escalate. However, there are real possibilities to change how we relate to each other politically, economically, and socially—and, by extension, change how we relate to the broader ecological world we are part of. The odds may be against us, but spirals of organisation and collective action can change the odds and change the world.
Ecology is the study of living organisms and their relationships to each other and their environments. Social Ecology is a framework for thinking about social and ecological processes and taking action to change the world. Founded by philosopher Murray Bookchin in the 1950s and 1960s, Social Ecology is a living set of ideas that strives to continually combine the best of philosophy with the best of natural and social sciences, through tracing interconnected social and ecological relations, processes, and possibilities.
Society is part of, and evolved out of, the natural world. Being political, economic, and social animals with conceptual language and technology, humans have immense potential to create and destroy. Depending on how we relate to each other, we can play mutualistic and creative roles toward social and ecological flourishing, or we can create death spirals leading to social and ecological destruction.
Social Ecology claims our major ecological problems are rooted in social problems—specifically problems of social hierarchy, as well as capitalism in particular. This social definition of hierarchy refers to institutionalised domination, where rulers command and the ruled obey. Contrary to anti-human myths, the ecological crisis is not the result of an excess of human freedom but is instead caused by the destruction of social freedom that happens through domination and exploitation, toward goals of profit and power over others.
Capitalism is based on commodity production for markets, wage labour (and other exploited labour!), class relations, and property. Designed to competitively acquire private profit, capitalism puts profit above social and ecological needs. It turns human labour and the ecological world more broadly into instruments and commodities to be exploited, destroyed, bought, and sold in competitive games over who gets what and who rules who. Ecosystems are sacrificed in the process of competition to increase profit, and exploitative and dominating labour. Within capitalism, businesses that do not exploit labour or extract as much from workers are at a competitive disadvantage to businesses exploiting and extracting more.
States are hierarchical entities which hold monopolies on violence within the territories they govern. They also have antisocial and anti-ecological aims. States can only exist through power over others. Different states both compete and cooperate by increasing their capacity to use violence against those they rule over, as well as external populations, and competing forces, at the expense of social and ecological flourishing. The militarism of states consumes the social and ecological world. Additionally, states exploit the populations they conquer and rule over for resources and labour.
Contemporary states also enforce capitalism and, by extension, enforce ecological destruction caused by capitalism, which is inseparable from it. Capitalism has been legalised, enforced, and expanded through states. As part of the capitalist world system, colonialism and the continuous enclosure of the commons create new commodities and markets, while forcing people into poverty, wage labour, and other exploited forms of work. The capitalist and state systems are entangled with various patriarchal, racist, imperial, colonial, and nationalist relations that function in and through such capitalist and state systems, creating populations that are hyper-exploited and hyper-dominated, as well as forced onto the frontlines of ecological disasters.
Hierarchical institutions and social relations co-create and transform each other, existing in particular and changing ways. Hierarchies destroy and inhibit self-management and commons that are based on shared and democratically managed resources. By extension, hierarchies exist at the expense of the kinds of social relationships necessary for social and ecological flourishing.
Because all these systems are interconnected, if some hierarchies were abolished while others continued without sufficient opposition, institutionalised domination would continue, along with its antisocial and anti-ecological results.
Towards an Ecological Society
Contrary to social hierarchy, social freedom would be the self-management of communities, collectives, and individuals on every scale, to act and develop without dominating each other. There is a grand history of freedom outside, alongside, and against the history of hierarchy. From social and ecological history, we can better understand the possibilities and conditions for mutual aid, self-organisation, freedom, unity in diversity, and non-hierarchical relationships to flourish.
Community self-management and commonly owned resources are extensions of social freedom and can meet the needs of all. Social Ecology proposes self-managed community assemblies based on dialogue, collective decision making, collective action, mutual aid, and shared common resources to meet needs and solve social problems. Community needs would be held in common, and individual wants would be given according to need.
Through non-hierarchical, participatory, and direct democracy, policies would be made by community assemblies, and administration would be carried out by mandated and recallable councils of such assemblies. Community assemblies would form inter-community associations together for making decisions where needed, co-managing common resources, and mutual aid between communities in such a way where all policy-making power is held by assemblies and the people in them directly. Community assemblies would strive towards an ecological abundance with well-being for all, in harmony with ecosystems they are part of.
Social Ecology proposes a vision where these forms of social and ecological freedom replace the current system of competitively increasing profit and power over others through domination, exploitation, commodification, and ecological destruction.
To get from here to this utopia, Social Ecology proposes developing self-managed community assemblies that work to meet short-term, mid-term and long-term needs/goals. This would be done through developing common resources, mutual aid projects, and direct action against domination, exploitation, and ecological destruction.
More broadly, associations of self-managed communities can become both alternative-and counter-powers against class relations and hierarchy. Strategically applied spirals of organisations and actions within and between community assemblies and other kinds of social movement organisations can, over time, develop popular will and capacity to overthrow hierarchical rule and create a free and ecological society. This general approach proposed by Social Ecology would be adapted to the needs, conditions, and desires of society and the natural world it is part of.
“Until society can be reclaimed by an undivided humanity that will use its collective wisdom, cultural achievements, technological innovations, scientific knowledge, and innate creativity for its own benefit and for that of the natural world, all ecological problems will have their roots in social problems.”
Usufruct Collective is a libertarian communist writing collective focused on what a good society consists of and how to get there.
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