Introduction

During the 1960s, I was a child in Naples, living in the working-class suburb of Bagnoli. My parents, like most of those who had lived through the war as children or teenagers, often reproached my brothers and me for our inability to grasp the immense privileges that had been given to us: 'We had nothing to eat and we were happy. You, on the other hand, you complain all the time even though you have everything.' This is a refrain that I heard again and again during my visits to Russia, India, southern Africa and Senegal - following the fall of communism in the first case and the end of colonization for the others - when my friends and colleagues reproached their children in exactly the same way.

Yet to me and my brothers, or the children of my friends in India and Russia, these criticisms made no sense. Most of our friends had much more than us. Apart from its dubious pedagogical value, this type of reproach rests on a peculiar conflation: on the one hand past hunger and, on the other, present inequalities. It's as if the poor of today and the humanity of yesterday belonged to a single category: that of poverty without reprieve.

This confusion has actually got worse as we have become aware of a close link between social inequalities and concern for the environment. A few years ago, my young daughter - obviously spoilt in my view - reproached the children of my Indian and Russian friends for not being concerned about the future of the planet. Their annoyed responses took her by surprise: how is it that people like you from wealthy countries were allowed to consume and pollute, while, now that we have the means to do so, we have to restrain ourselves?

Finally, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the tensions between generations and between rich and poor have evolved into tensions between the errors of the past, the fear of the present and the uncertainties of the future. The distress of my daughter and my students hits me like a slap in the face every day.

In response to this distressful state of affairs, Earth Capital: The Long History of Capitalism and Its Aftermath is not a contradiction but an epistemological and political stance, an attempt to suggest possible ways forward in the face of this distress. A longue durée perspective is needed in order to envisage our future - not as a rupture with no link to the past, but rather as a response to centuries of capitalist growth built on inequalities and the depletion of resources.

Earth capital

Between 2004 and 2011, the price of food crops and staples skyrocketed, basically doubling. Famines and riots occurred in Southeast Asia, in numerous regions of Africa, in Latin America and the Near East. In a single year (2007-8), the price of a kilo of rice doubled in Southeast Asia (Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia), exceeding the average daily wage in Cambodia. In Central America, the price of tortilla (the staple food of poor populations) increased by up to 70 per cent (they called it the 'tortilla crisis'). In some African countries, the price of wheat, corn, sorghum and millet increased by 50 per cent or even 100 per cent or more in a few months. These price hikes threatened the food supply of 100 million people around the world. Despite increases in production, hundreds of millions of people do not have access to the minimum needed for subsistence.

Ministers of agriculture in Europe and the United States were quick to blame a surge in demand as well as unfavourable climate conditions. They were lying and they knew it. International speculation on food staples has multiplied in recent years; staples are bought and sold even before they are grown. The deregulation of both financial and commodities markets is behind these tensions. But that is not the only factor: new forms of speculation on farmland (land-grabbing) have affected the entire planet. In 2016, an NGO called GRAIN catalogued 300 transactions involving 30 million hectares across 70 countries, half of them in Africa.1 Multinationals based in London acquired land in Madagascar and Argentina. Another based in Malaysia bought land in Liberia. In just a few years, the Indian company Siva accumulated a portfolio of nearly 1 million hectares of agricultural land for oil palm plantations in Africa and Southeast Asia.2

As often as not, these lands are left uncultivated, waiting for the most opportune moment for production or resale. Alternatively, they are cultivated using seeds produced in a few laboratories belonging to multinationals in Europe and the United States. Hybrid seeds or GMOs with a lifespan limited to one or two years - and which therefore must be constantly resupplied - promise enormous yields, which quickly collapse, however, without the massive use of chemicals, also sold by Northern multinationals. Speculation on hunger, inequality and the destruction of the planet are closely linked.

In this book, I use the term 'Earth' to refer both to the planet as a whole and to its land as a factor of production. Access to farmland, water, seeds and agricultural products will be fundamental in the construction of the world of tomorrow, just as it was during the dysfunctions of the world of before. However, these elements must now be considered at the planetary level. With this twin meaning of planet and resource, the Earth constitutes a kind of 'capital' - a notion that has been associated with private property for too many centuries. It is time to consider the planet, its land and its oceans, its plants and its animals as a common good. It is not just a matter of preserving it (notion of heritage), but of reconstituting and interacting with it so that all humans and all other species can benefit from it. But how?

Among their numerous discoveries, economists seem to appreciate one in particular: 'path dependence'. According to this theory, we are bound by our previous choices and this straightjacket becomes so heavy and restrictive over time that it is practically impossible to escape. In this schema, preservation and resignation are the cornerstones of societies and historical dynamics. The goal of this book is completely different: not to idealize the past, but to understand it. If we limit ourselves to making the observation that we are prisoners of our prior choices, what do we have to offer our children?

Nothing is written in stone. Choices were made in the past that got us where we are today, with a planet in agony and where a handful of rich people control the destiny of billions. And yet, just like the past, our future is not predetermined. We are not destined to perish in the flames of collapse, but nor do we have thousands of alternative options. The way of thinking about the future in relation to the past requires a reflection on our ability to express our experiences and ambitions, our regrets and hopes.

More than ever, we need to close the gap between utopia and realism. Too often, the proponents of utopia have been reproached for their lack of realism and the 'realists' for their lack of political courage. In the pragmatism of the proposals that follow, I do not ignore historical trajectories or abandoned projects. I question both, not accepting anything straight off. This book is guided by a central premise: the fight against inequalities and the preservation of the planet are inseparable. Progress cannot be made on one front without the other. Instead of dreaming about an authentic world of old or condemning the Industrial Revolution, instead of criticizing the West or China, we should eradicate the elements that have contributed the most to depleting our Earth's capital and caused the rise in inequalities: speculation on staples and markets for virtual products; patents, particularly on seeds; and land-grabbing. These behaviours (and the underlying institutions that make them possible) should not just be reformed, but prohibited. They are linked to others: an overhaul of the taxation system and public finances in a truly egalitarian direction; environmental policies that go beyond the energy transition and green taxation.

However, and this is one of the challenges of this book, environmental issues are tightly interwoven with those involving inequalities. It is impossible to resolve some questions without also tackling others. Yet conventional political programs and ideologies on the left - and even more so those on the right - are unable to reconcile these elements. They advocate defending labour, fighting against inequalities, with a smattering of ecology, on the one hand, and paying extreme attention to the environment and the difficulty of proposing coherent public policy on the issue of inequalities, on the other. Fiscal policies, such as those recommended by Piketty, and, more broadly, the defence of labour deserve to be brought back to the centre of public policy. This defence requires the broadening of labour rights and their convergence with political and social rights more generally. All too often in Western thinking, democracy and political rights are set in opposition to social and economic equality, as if one could function without the other (liberal argument) or the reverse (socialist and communist argument). This book not only shows that these elements can and must be brought together, but that nature can no longer be envisaged simply as something to exploit. Democracy, social equality and the environment are the three pillars of our future.

When does the future begin?

This book is an invitation to take possession of time in two...