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We are
in the ecological crisis, and not just as victims of an environmental devastation that is unequally distributed along intersecting hierarchies of class, ‘race’ and gender. We are part of the crisis because, in our society, the vast majority of us rely on work to pay for the things we need to survive. This means we also depend on the infinite growth of commodity production that defines capitalism and drives the ecological crisis. Nonetheless, workers’ insertion in capital accumulation also has an antagonistic face, rooted in their very separation from the means of production. Therefore, labour is also a crucial collective actor
against the ecological crisis.
This book explores the relationship between workers and nature by bringing Italian
operaismo into a dialogue with a broad range of traditions, from dependency theory to ecofeminism. Drawing on sustained research in both the Global South – Tunisia and Chile – and the Global North – the UK and Italy – it tackles four timely issues in relation to the ecological crisis: automation and deindustrialisation, employment precarity, imperialism and war, and social reproduction.
List of contents
Preface
1-Introduction: Workers and the ecological crisisEnvironmental justice and labour
Capitalist noxiousness
From noxious deindustrialisation to working-class environmentalism
2-Automation and noxious deindustrialisation: The political composition of capitalThe prime mover of the ecological crisis
Deindustrial decline with industrial noxiousness
Grangemouth, UK: Glowing fires, vanishing jobs
3-The surplus working class: Precarity in environmental degradationThe pincer movement
Dispossession by accumulation
Kerkennah, Tunisia: Oil, gas, and blue crabs
4-The international division of labour and noxiousness: Wage, profit and rent in the ecological transition from aboveThe mysteries of the Trinity formula
The ‘green’ plan of capital
Ventanas, Chile: Noxious deindustrialisation in extractivism
5-Against noxiousness: Working-class environmentalism from the hidden abodes of production and reproductionAn ecological turn in class composition analysis
Operaismo versus capitalist noxiousness
Marghera vs Marghera, Italy
6-Conclusion: The ecological transition from below
About the author
Lorenzo Feltrin is a researcher at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He grew up in Treviso, close to Venice and its industrial hub, Porto Marghera. In Treviso, he took part in the occupations that established the Django Social Centre. He is active in international social movement networks mobilising on labour and environmental issues, such as the Ex GKN Florence's autoworkers struggle for a just transition.
