The scepticism we lack when it comes to modernist triumphalism

After a summer of lethargy and nausea at the thought of any kind of work or prolonged mental exertion, how could I not try reading a book on the subject, such as the one offered to me free of charge and delivered to my door by Feltrinelli and the scholar Pierre Charbonnier, entitled "Abbondanza e libertà". An environmental history of political ideas? Unfortunately, one often wonders how the systematic treatises produced by scholars can be read by anyone who is not a specialist in the field.

The book covers a great deal of ground. The author, however, lacks the ability to hold the reader’s attention. Repetitions abound, and I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that its three hundred and fifty pages could have been reduced to thirty-five, referring the reader – as has been done – to the extensive bibliography, both specialist and general, in which the works of Karl Polanyi, Bruno Latour, Locke, Smith, Stuart Mill, Saint-Simon, Fichte, Marx, Durkheim, Proudhon and Marcuse… Experts and enthusiasts will find the volume both enjoyable and useful. During a summer like the one we have just endured, readers may feel inclined to leaf through the book, browsing here and there and arriving, more or less quickly, at the conclusions.

The fact that human life is submerged in the market was already clear to Marx, who summarised the issue as follows: ‘The gigantic collection of commodities that constitutes capitalism’. And Adolphe Blanqui, a contemporary of Mazzini and a communist, the first translator of Adam Smith, said: “The division of labour and the refinement of machinery, which were supposed to guarantee the great working-class family the gain of a little leisure time for the sake of its dignity, have in many cases generated nothing but dullness and misery.” Quite so. For almost two centuries, many of these observations have been repeated, accumulating and perfecting themselves to the point of absurdity, even if dullness and misery are not always still called by those names.

I might allow myself (though there is no need) to include another quotation in which the two realms that confront, intermingle and mirror one another appear – realms that should, by now, be improving their relations, if indeed that is ever possible: namely, human society and the natural world. We should at least arrive at a goal that is as necessary as it is insufficient: namely, a healthy scepticism towards modernist triumphalism, which prevailed in the Western world between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and which still inhabits the minds of a humanity at the service of machines. It should be remembered that modernist triumphalism has taken hold of the entire cultural landscape—in the East even more so than in the West—and within Asian societies that are hyper-technologised in a totalitarian sense.

Given that social relations are closely linked to our relationship with nature, which has been reduced to a commodity, social issues can no longer be separated from ecological ones: whether it be our mobile phones, our cars or the food on our plates, behind all of this lie the mines, the air we breathe, the energy derived from the conditions of the land – land that is cultivated, occupied, exploited, inhabited and polluted. These are human choices, or so it is moralistically claimed. It is as if to say that ‘society’ is the subject radically involved – a subject that must, however, be re-educated, because it finds it increasingly difficult to understand what it wants, if it wants anything at all, when, how much and at what cost, or in accordance with which environmentalist philosophy.

At this point, Charbonnier, the philosopher and historian of environmental ideas, does not succumb to theoretical fanaticism: the social collective that is meant to be the rightful agent of an effective ecological counter-movement is not yet visible to anyone, nor is it known to anyone. Only partial forms of environmentalist groups are emerging: residents living near hazardous facilities, victims of extractive operations, alternative land users, scientists and educators… It is hoped that SUV enthusiasts will opt, at least in towns and cities, to cycle instead.