Engaging the Imperial Mode of Living

In their powerful book The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism (Verso, 2021), Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen demonstrate how our life in the capitalist centres and its dominant forms of production, distribution and consumption can only be maintained, because the related social and ecological costs are externalised to other parts of the world. Published originally in German in 2017, this volume is now also available to the English reading audience. In this blog post, I will draw out some of the authors’ crucial findings.

 

The definition of the imperial mode of living highlights not only the inequality within the global political economy, but also how the wealth in the capitalist centres, the Global North, depends on the labour and poverty of the peoples in the periphery, the Global South, as well as the relentless destruction of nature. ‘The core idea of the concept is that everyday life in the capitalist centres is essentially made possible by shaping social relations and society-nature relations elsewhere, i.e. by means of (in principle) unlimited access to labour power, natural resources and sinks – ecosystems (such as rainforests and oceans in the case of CO2) that absorb more of a particular substance than they emit into their environment – on a global scale’ (PP.39-40). Thus, the maintenance of our lifestyles in the Global North depends on utter violence and deprivation in the Global South continuing with a logic of colonialism, which has been part and parcel of capitalism from its very emergence.

 

Assessing the current state of affairs through the lens of the imperial mode of living allows Brand and Wissen to make a number of key contributions to our understanding of today’s global political economy. First, while many political economists hail the rise of emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as a progressive challenge to established capitalist powers, Brand and Wissen unmask it as simply a further deepening of the imperial mode of living. ‘In the wake of the economic rise of China, India or Brazil, their growing middle and upper classes are increasingly adopting the imperial mode of living’ (P.116). There may be a challenge to the dominant geopolitical order, the dynamics underpinning the global political economy remain, however, the same.

Second, nothing expresses the inner contradiction of the imperial mode of life more clearly than the current ecological crisis. It is ‘a clear indication that the global North’s norms of production and consumption, which evolved with capitalism and have now become universal, can be maintained in their ecologically modernized form only at the cost of ever more violence, ecological destruction and human suffering, and, at that, in an ever-smaller part of the world’ (P.8). Brand and Wissen at the same time are sceptical that so-called green new deals (GNDs) based on green economic growth and green capitalism provide an adequate response. ‘It is an overly bold hope to assume that an “absolute decoupling” of growth from resource use and environmental impact is possible under capitalism’ (P.167). Instead, GNDs are simply yet another attempt to overcome the crisis of the imperial mode of living by deepening it further.

 

Third, they draw out well how the working classes of the capitalist centres are structurally depending on, and benefitting from, the imperial mode of living. Importantly, they are not a kind of ‘labour aristocracy’ which consciously participates in the exploitation of peoples in the Global South to benefit themselves. Rather, ‘the integration of workers in the global North into the imperial mode of living has always been a subaltern relationship’ (P.XX). Structurally their participation in the mode of living can only be secured by deepening it. Unsurprisingly, the imperial mode of living is rarely questioned by them (P.105).

 

Fourth, they provide first ideas about an alternative, a solidary mode of living based on different power and socio-ecological relations. ‘A solidary mode of living must recognize the fundamental vulnerability of human and non-human life and create forms of living together that are not based on making the lives of many or even only a few people precarious, or that similarly endanger nature’ (P.199). This would also require a more drastic questioning of existing production forms including a ‘discussion about dismantling and converting unsustainable economic sectors, such as the defence and automotive industries, secured by appropriate labour market and socio-ecological industrial policies’ (P.214).

 

There are some limits to Brand and Wissen’s arguments. While they mention on a number of occasions the need to pay special attention to the patriarchal and racial forms of oppression structuring the imperial mode of living, they hardly explore these dynamics in any great detail. Moreover, their discussion of a ‘solidary mode of living’ does not go beyond some first, rough ideas of what could be part of such a mode of living. Nevertheless, filling the gaps on the implications of patriarchy and racism can also be regarded as a challenge to be taken on by others. Equally, exploring a solidary mode of living cannot be simply the task of two academic researchers. Only collective reflective and practical experiments can bring us forward in this respect.

 

What the Imperial Mode of Living has clearly done is providing us with a conceptual lens, which allows us to explore the current multiple global crises and contradictions in a way, which forces us to focus on exploitation of people and expropriation of nature. A must-read for everyone interested in understanding our current (global) situation and what must be done to change it for the better!  

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net

19 January 2021