Luxemburg meets schumpeter: Understanding contemporary socio-ecological conflicts as processes of destructive creation

Abstract

This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand contemporary socio-ecological conflicts in the context of capitalist development. Drawing on almost 2,400 cases mapped in the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJA), it outlines major characteristics of these struggles. It is suggested that these struggles are best understood as class struggles of a distinct form. While traditional class struggles focus on the capital-labour relation situated in the visible zone of commodity production, socio-ecological conflicts are analysed through a reinterpretation of Rosa Luxemburg's theory of imperialism as value struggles between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of (re)production. The implications for capitalist development are highlighted by introducing the inversion of Joseph Schumpeter's famous Creative Destruction, thus Destructive Creation. As frontier-making processes, these conflicts are conceptualised as dynamic limits to capital and therefore are an important terrain for socioecological transformation.