Introduction
On April 24, 2026, Sid Ryan, former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, posted on Facebook a claim that social reformists like himself are pragmatists who get things done and achieve something for the working class whereas radical leftists have done practically nothing for the working class. I indicated on my last post how I responded, in part, on Facebook to his absurd claim (see Fair Contracts or Collective Agreements: The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part Eight: The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL)).
I have had an interesting time working lately with young and older communists in the peace movement here in Winnipeg. I do not understand how they view organizing and how they see their revolutionary change actually taking place.On the other hand some of us have a very clear vision and plan for just transition and Green Labour using both parliamentary means through a political party, social movements for peace, climate justice, Indigenous decolonization, etc and through organized labour.What remains to be seen is we can move Canadians to see the future we see and vote for our new NDP in large enough numbers to make a difference before collapse really hits.
1. Perhaps Marianne can specify what “this clear vision and plan for just transition” is given that workers in a society dominated by a class of employers is necessarily exploited (Tony Smith, among others, argue for such necessity in his book “The Logic of Marx’s Capital: Reply to Hegelian Criticisms”).2. Perhaps she can specify how it is possible to attain “Green Labour” and “climate justice” in a society structured in such a way that there is infinite growth (and when there is not, there is an economic crisis, with all the negative that entails) (for the idea that capital functions within an infinite growth system, see The Money Circuit of Capital).
just transition means moving from fossil fuels to renewable in a way that does lot sacrifice jobs or workers.And Green Labour means an economy that is sustainable and not unlimited growth nor poverty and huge wealth gaps and wealth concentration.Read up on it. Circular economy. Genuine progress indicators. Lots to do since we have wasted over 30 years.
Wow. That certainly enlightens us. “Moving from fuels to renewable in a way that does not sacrifice jobs or workers.” Marianne accepts the category “jobs” without thinking about what a “job” means. What is a “job” in modern society?Let us assume that it is possible to move away from fossil fuels to renewable resources within a capitalist system–without a loss of jobs or workers.What kind of a situation would workers be in?
Rather than suggesting the reader “read up on it,” I will include something from my blog. It is rather long, so I will have to present it in parts.
Should not Marianne enlighten us about the nature of the “circular economy” rather than just referring to it?
From my blog (I then pasted my description of the The Money Circuit of Capital in two parts, excluding the public sector since the combined post was already long).
I did a bit of research on what Marianne wrote about the “circular economy.” As far as I can tell (I could of course be mistaken), she had made only one reference to this concept, and she does not in any way explain what it means.I then searched for some articles on the concept. I did find a couple of articles on the concept, written from a Marxian point of view: 1. Jacopo Nicola Bergamo and Michele Graziano Ceddia, “A Marxist critique of Circular Economy: From alienation to ecological civilization,” (I will probably rely mainly on this article–although I will ignore the issue of China because I doubt that China qualifies as a socialist society); and Andrea Genovese & Mario Pansera, “The Circular Economy at a Crossroads: Technocratic Eco-Modernism or Convivial Technology for Social Revolution?”I will probably criticize Marianne’s reliance on the circular economy concept in one of my posts on my blog by using the first article in particular since it seems to explain better what the circular economy is and why it is an inadequate model in a capitalist context as a solution to creating a sustainable environment. Since Marianne does not bother to specify what the implications are for the environment for a society dominated by an economic structure such as the money circuit of capital, her solution of a circular economy (or rather her claim for it to be a solution since she fails to specify what it is and how it is a solution) falls radically short of what is required to actually create a sustainable environment–a socialist society without employers and the associated economic, political and social structures.
The Nature of the Circular Economy
What is the circular economy? Nicola Bergamo and Graziano Ceddia define it (page 2):
The concept of Circular Economy (from here onwards CE) has now achieved great popularity to the point of partly transcending the narrow academic borders. Its aim is to mediate between industrial production and sustainable development through resource efficiency [1]. The method by which this can be achieved is through the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle).
The Impossible Dream
The scientific debate has on the one hand contested the notion of CE, with respect to its compatibility with the laws of thermodynamics.
On the other hand, the purely technocratic view of CE … overlooks the nature of the social relations of production that constitute the economy.
The Circular Economy and the Laws of Thermodynamics
The circular economy that supposedly involves a sustainable economy presupposes a closed system (page 2):
the economy is presented as a thermodynamically isolated system: it exists in a vacuum, without exchanging matter or energy with its surrounding environment.
But the real economy involves an open system:
How ever, real economies do not exist in a vacuum. They are firmly located within a biophysical environment, with which they exchange matter and energy. In a word, economies are thermodynamically open systems.
The real economy is not only an open system, but it is also a complex system:
Complex systems are characterised by emergent properties and are self-organizing. They are dissipative structures that maintain their internal organization and their identity through the metabolic exchange with the surrounding envi ronment, that is through the dissipation of flows of matter and energy from the surrounding context.
The first lesson we learn is that, unlike the idea of a CE which assumes an internal re-circulation of matter/energy, real economies maintain their internal organization through a metabolic exchange with the surrounding environment. In doing so, they modify the environment. Importantly, an economy should pay particular attention not to interfere too much with the ability of the environment to supply a flow of negative entropy.
We already discussed how the economy is not circular, since it relies on metabolic exchange with nature. However, an economy relying mainly on fund-service and renewable stock-flow resources, instead of non-renewable stock-flow resources, would certainly be less disruptive to the environment.
The issue is that fund-service and renewable stock-flow resources may not be compatible with high growth rates. Moreover, continuous expansion of the economy ultimately destroys the resources necessary for the existence of society.
The Social Relations of Production–in a Capitalist Economy
The idea of reducing, reusing and recycling is hardly new. However, the view that the three R’s and the circular economy will form a solution to the environmental crisis is new. But why such a focus now? Page 3:
Given the constraints posed by the laws of thermodynamics, it is interesting to ask why the CE concept has become so dominant in the environmental discourse and practice. …
Perhaps it constitutes a means of avoiding having to address the social relations of production of a society characterized by exploitation and oppression at work (something which Cerilli simply ignores, it seems–I cannot find anything where she addresses issues related to the lack of control of workers at work)? Page 3:
CE is fundamentally the capitalist alienated articulation of the environmental discourse and practice, which does not escape from a fetishist conception of commodity, money and capital.3 Chapter 5 of volume three of Marx’s Capital is entirely devoted to explaining how capital is naturally driven to make savings in constant capital. This tendency is particularly evident in the push for scientific and techno logical development, to understand the properties and uses of waste and to incorporate them into new methods of production. Under these conditions the three Rs of CE — reduce, reuse, recycle — become a goal of capitalist industry. Actually, Marx makes it clear how capital tends to reduce the energy and raw materials per unit of output, it reuses waste in the same production process or it transfers it to other branches of in dustry. Every capitalist has the incentive to make the best possible use of raw materials and machinery, because they incorporate labour already spent, they present themselves to him as values. The capitalist is mindful of saving what is value-bearing, but not at all of what enters the pro duction process as a free gift, be it the natural conditions of production, or social factors such as workers’ health condition. Marx noted how “Capitalist production […] is very economical with the materialised labour incorporated in commodities. Yet, more than any other mode of production, it squanders human lives, or living-labour, and not only blood and flesh, but also nerve and brain”. The capitalist system thus seems spontane ously prone to articulate the environmental discourse and practice in terms of the three tenets of CE.
The environmental-friendly aspect of capitalist social relations of production, however, has as its necessary counterpart an opposite aspect: an aspect which Cerilli simply ignores:
However, capital can never overcome itself. This is particularly evident when considering the tensions between the behaviour of the individual capitalist and the behaviour of the system as a whole. The individual capitalist is motivated to increase labour productivity to augment his profit share. It is for this reason that capitalists invest in energy efficiency to reduce the use of raw materials and machinery. However, the increase in efficiency corresponds to the ability of every labour unit to process a larger quantity of matter and energy. When this is coupled with the overall drive of the system to expand, in order to pursue endless capital accumulation, the result is the rebound effect, also known as Jevons paradox.
What is the Jevons paradox? The Jevons paradox/rebound effect means that making resource use more efficient can lower costs and stimulate enough expansion that total resource consumption stays the same or even rises—especially in systems organized around growth and capital accumulation.
In a capitalist economy, as I have pointed out in The Money Circuit of Capital and on Ryan’s Facebook page, involves a persistent need to expand and accumulate without end:
Marx observed how capitalism, while developing the possibility to solve environmental problems, can never realize it because of the fetishist effect of capitalist accumulation [28,32,33,39]. The reason lies in the permanent drive towards capitalist accumulation, summarized in Marx’s formula M – C – M’ [where M’ means more money than at the beginning, M]. Capitalist growth is measured in value, alienated from concrete ecological and social conditions, but still linked to concrete bodies, to flows of matter and energy which, however efficient they may be, cannot fall to zero.
Conclusion
Cerilli, like so many social reformists, simply ignores the nature of the capitalist economy. Her reference to the circular economy is a contradiction in terms: no economy can be fully circular because all production irreversibly uses energy, degrades materials, and depends on new inputs from nature. Reducingn, reusing and recycling can slow depletion, not abolish it. A growth-driven economy therefore cannot be made sustainable merely by “closing loops.” And a capitalist economy is a growth-driven economy. Social reformists like her–and the Sid Ryan’s of the world–do not take into account the specific nature of the capitalist economy when formulating the nature of the problem and when offering solutions.
Of course, such arguments will probably go in one ear and out the other for social reformists. To try to convince them is probably a waste of time. It is not, however, a waste of time to expose their lack of proper specification of the problem and the utopian nature of their proposed solutions.
The Abolitionary 