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Institute for
Social Ecology

popular education for a free society

Biotechnology and Society  |   Vol. 2, No. 1

Radicalizing the Debate

By Brian Tokar

ver the past year, news of the hazards of genetically engineered foods has finally broken into the U.S. mainstream media.  The contamination of taco shells and other products with a variety of engineered corn not approved for human consumption, the gathering of 4000 people last March to demonstrate against the biotechnology industry convention in Boston (an event initiated and partly organized by the Institute for Social Ecology), and continuing direct actions against fields of genetically engineered crops, have helped made it impossible for the corporate media to continue to ignore this issue.  For those of us at the ISE who have been working on biotech issues for many years, this is clearly an important breakthrough, but it also makes it imperative that we continue working to broaden and radicalize the debate.

Evidence for the unique dangers of genetically engineered foods continues to mount.  Even though research on the problems with these products can hardly keep up with 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars devoted toward accelerating their commercialization, each new independent study appears to confirm what biotech critics have been saying all along.  From the threat of increased food allergies, antibiotic resistance and more serious metabolic and developmental problems, to the widely-reported hazard to monarch butterflies and numerous varieties of agriculturally beneficial insects, the evidence increasingly supports the need for caution. 

There is an emerging consensus that the burden of proof must be shifted onto the proponents of this radically disruptive new technology.  But it is crucial that the debate continue to push beyond the limits of what can be documented scientifically, beyond what social ecologist Chaia Heller has described as the discourse of risk.  The more that officials of the U.S. government, and of global institutions such as the WTO, insist that only known, quantifiable risks are legitimate areas for public policy, the more imperative it becomes for activists and other concerned citizens to insist upon raising the larger questions:  What does this new technology mean for our society, for the exercise of political and economic power and for the possibilities of actualizing a genuinely free society?  How can we fully comprehend all the disturbing social consequences of the new genetic technologies?

A meaningful discussion of the implications of the new biotechnologies needs to begin with the concept of commodification.  In the 19^th century, Marx introduced the notion of the commodity as an "external object,"¹ a product of human labor that has been torn asunder from the ages-old means by which people work to satisfy their basic life needs.  Capitalism creates "exchange values," divorced from traditional, social "use-values,"² and tied to the disciplines and strictures of the commercial marketplace.  The commodification of basic needs, including the appropriation of land and human labor as principles of exchange, was a central development underlying the founding stages of capitalism.  It is a main tenet of the long-range ideological project of dominating and controlling external nature.

In the latter half of the 20^th century, the processes of commodification were extended to all spheres of social life, popular culture, and even the most intimate realms of personal experience.  The Frankfurt School critiqued the fast-growing culture industry as an extension of the larger project of domination in society; for Horkheimer, Adorno and others, the domination of humanity and nature appeared to be a regrettable, albeit sometimes horrific, historical necessity, while social ecology casts ideas of "dominating nature" as a direct consequence of patterns of domination in society.  Murray Bookchin, in Re-enchanting Humanity, described the all-pervasive qualities of commercial culture:

"Today, the unbridled expansion of the market transforms nearly all traditional personal relationships into commodity ties, fostering a belief in the merits of consumption and a highly synthetic image of ‘the good life.’"³

While the roots of organized persuasion and the creation of artificial needs can be traced back to precapitalist institutions, 20^th century capitalism extended its reach far deeper into private life and everyday consciousness:

"From the 1950s onward, the market economy has not only imperialized every aspect of conventional life, it has also dissolved the memory of the alternative lifeways that precede it."⁴

The project of modern biotechnology takes this process of commodification many steps further, extending its reach to literally encompass all of organic life.  It is perhaps the apex of the capitalist project of domination and control over human and non-human nature.  Biotechnology literally seeks to bring all of life, down to the cellular and molecular levels, into the sphere of commercial products. From microorganisms that lie deep within the boiling geysers of Yellowstone National Park — found to be the subject of a secret agreement between the U.S. National Park Service and a San Diego-based biotechnology company — to the human DNA sequences being mapped by both public and private agencies, all of life on earth is being reduced to a set of objects and codes to be bought, sold and patented under the domain of the capitalist marketplace.

Furthermore, biotechnology seeks to alter the fundamental patterns of non-human nature so as to better satisfy the demands of the market. Wherever natural patterns are not well suited to continued exploitation, biotechnology raises the possibility of redesigning life forms to satisfy capitalist demands. Where soil fertility and plant health are undermined by monocropping and chemical fertilizers, biotechnologists make crops tolerant to herbicides so growers can use more noxious chemicals to destroy weeds, and also make them secrete bacterial toxins to attack various crop pests. Where industrial-scale irrigation lowers the water table and makes the soil saltier, they offer to make food crops more resistant to drought and to salt, perpetuating our society’s ability to ignore the underlying causes of these problems.

Where marketable fish species like salmon have difficulties surviving year round in far northern hatcheries, genetic engineers seek to splice in frost resistance from cold-water species such as flounder, and also make them grow dramatically faster. If naturally bred livestock cannot satisfy the demand for ever-increasing profit margins, commercial breeders aim to offer clones of their most productive animals. Timber companies want to raise plantations of genetically engineered trees that grow faster, and have an altered biochemical makeup that may be more amenable to chemical processing for paper pulp. In each instance, biotechnology dramatically furthers the process of replacing the organic with the synthetic, perpetuating the myth that the inherent ecological limitations of a thoroughly nature-denying economic and social system can simply be engineered out of existence.

Social Ecology n 1: a coherent radical critique of current social, political, and anti-ecological trends. 2: a reconstructive, ecological, communitarian, and ethical approach to society.

Published by the Institute for Social Ecology