The ecological critique of capitalism must be firmly embedded in revolutionary theory and practice

~ José Luis Carretero Miramar, Rojo y Negro ~

The party has begun for global investment funds. The money allocated to launching data centers around the world exceeded 200 billion dollars in 2022 and is expected to continue growing without stopping in the next five years. In Spain we already have 143, according to the Cloud Scene platform.

The International Energy Agency is warning that in 2026 the demand for energy coming from data centres will be more than 30% higher than in 2023 and will constitute as much as 3% of the total energy consumption of the European Union. Data centres form the basic infrastructure for the digitalisation of economic activity in the age of the Cloud, and the essential bedrock for advances in commercial models of generative AI which are seen as the Holy Grail for those keen to invest in economic activity where their capital will grow in the context of an escalating geopolitical crisis.

AI and the Cloud are driving the demand to build data centres and in turn data centres are giving rise to investment in renewable energy sources and the electricity networks needed to provide them with energy. It all sounds very good. Digitalisation is the other side of the ecological transition coin and, in addition, creates jobs and helps increase productivity. Or so we are told by the European Commission.

However, data centres are also a cause of environmental damage. The enormous amount of space they occupy along with their energy and water consumption puts pressure on scarce resources and raises the costs for people living near to them. Not all that glitters is gold or at least not gold for everyone. Microsoft has signed an agreement with Constellation Energy to provide power to the centres for the next twenty years. This will see the reopening of the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Middletown, Pennsylvania, famous since 1979 as the site of the worst radioactive leakage in the history of the USA. Those who are arguing for multiple new small scale nuclear reactors to provide the energy are making their voices heard more and more.

Data centres are of strategic interest to big tech companies and for the contemporary capitalist economy. And they are also part of the reality that could help us understand the contradictions inherent in the process by which capital seeks to adapt to the environmental crisis and the environmental resistance to the devastation of nature caused by a society built on consumption and added value.

The working class and environmental struggle

Capitalism is seeking to adapt itself to the ecological crisis it has created by moving investment into renewables and electrification but still clinging to notions of growing capital accumulation and the quantitative role played by productive forces. The aim is to produce in an ‘ecological’ manner but to continue producing more and more commodities and, moreover, for these commodities to reproduce further. The European Commission’s Green New Deal is designed to channel the funds of those contributing (that is to say, taxes on wages and goods consumed by working people) to the money chests of the transnational energy companies and ensure mobility to guarantee that in the new ‘ecological’ scenario they will continue to maintain their hegemony in their respective markets.

In this context, mere environmentalism, that is, environmentalism without revolutionary will, does nothing more than pave the way for the chaotic management processes implemented by governments at capitalism’s service. There is no possible “green” capitalism, just as there is no “human” capitalism. The process of capital accumulation does not understand use values ​​or progressive or traditionalist civilising projects. The commercial circuit is its blood system and exchange value is its only morality.

Thus, the ecological critique of capitalism must be firmly embedded in the universe of revolutionary theory and practice. The process of transition to an ecologically responsible society necessarily involves anti-capitalist and revolutionary intervention by the working class.

There is no “technical” and “neutral” solution to the current environmental devastation. There are no possible ecological reforms that will not be hindered, and more than compensated, by increased devastation in the short term if the process of capital accumulation continues at the same time.

The alliance between the working class and the ecological struggle is urgent and necessary. But, to implement a great social alliance against the continuity of capitalism, it is essential to consider the problems of the organization and the insertion of the revolutionary discourse among broad layers of the population. The time is already gone for any possible “ecological enlightenment” that could promote environmental reforms from a rationalist state policy based on the idea of ​​“everything for the people (or for the species), but without the people”.

The ecological problem we face is not essentially a technical issue, but a political conflict, and it must be treated as such. It is a problem that the people must take into their own hands and hearts. We must therefore build a great social alliance that aims to overcome capitalism and, with it, labour exploitation, the precariousness of large sections of the population and the devastation of ecosystems. We must organize ourselves to build, to create, an entirely new way of life. A vital framework based on the needs and desires of those who produce and care, and not on the blind and chaotic accumulation of surplus value. The organization of the working class is an essential tool in the ecological struggle.