"Selling Nature" Précis

1. In “Selling Nature,” O’Connor wants to illuminate the underlying assumptions in his primary question, “What is intrinsic to capitalism that determines a particular kind of relationship between capitalism and nature?” He investigates how we’ve come to frame such thoughts, and ultimately argues that the profit motivation is intrinsic to capitalism (6). During the course of the essay, O’Connor addresses the ramifications of capitalism by referring to influential ideas during the Enlightenment. In the end, he argues that it’s unreasonable to expect capitalists to “make decisions that would privilege the environment, underdeveloped nations, or workers” (6). Given its merging foundations, capitalism incites ecologically harmful methods of production. In fact, O’Connor argues that capitalism destroys the very conditions of which it depends.

2. This essay is primarily intended for any persons who expect capitalism to privilege the environment, underdeveloped nations, or workers (as O’Connor suggests its limitations should only be expected since capitalism is inherently profit-based). Though the argument refutes any claims to surprise (e.g. “How can capitalism be so selfish?”), it also anticipates possible rejections by addressing the negative responses to capitalism as inevitable. O’Connor addresses the social and environmental concerns as legitimate by calling social movements yet another crisis of underproduction. These concerns are deemed legitimate insofar as they are upsetting to experience, rather than for being unpredictable existences. People will get mad. The contradictions of capitalism, such as overproduction, lead to a consciousness of the gap between classes which would result in worker revolution.

This essay is also intended for an audience less informed about the ramifications of the character of capitalism. For this, I am certainly a part of the intended audience. While I can recognize the social and environmental concerns triggered by capitalism, it was through my reading of this essay that I even learned about the incapacities of capitalism that O’Connor argues can’t be expected to accommodate non-profit-based concerns.

3. At the very outset of the essay, O’Connor wants to make one point immediately clear: “by its nature, capital is bad at preserving things” (1). O’Connor suggests that it’s odd to think about nature and humanity as separate entities, so he reviews how such thinking patterns came to existence. After explaining how one thought of the Enlightenment led to another, he insists that we not consider capitalism’s characteristics inherently bad. Capitalism needs to externalize costs in order to accumulate, which unfortunately destroys the foundation upon which it is based.

After addressing several concerns against capitalism in his essay, O’Connor makes various suggestions. One of the actions that he advises is that worker and environmental movements unite, making the red-green alliance. The essay goes on to say that he has a specific suggestion for this red-green alliance, but that suggestion is never revealed. Instead, the essay discusses O’Connor’s approach -- which should rather be called his “attitude” -- that capitalism be recognized as incapable of perpetual growth. According to O’Connor, there are already long-term costs in capitalism which makes it unreasonable to expect any humanitarian resolutions. For this reason, O’Connor argues that we shouldn’t be so upset with capitalism. “It simply is” (6).

Instead, O’Connor suggests that we alternate our concerns. It’s better that we understand both the power and limitations of capitalism. He calls his alternative Preservation First! (PF!), which acknowledges social-supply-side economics. “Business should be engaged in order ‘to preserve, defend, and enhance the conditions of life and life itself’” (7). This business wouldn’t have the contradictions inherent in capitalism, thereby allowing us other ways to attempt enhancing and protecting humanitarian concerns. Though O’Connor finally offers his most viable suggestion, he ends the essay abruptly, without offering much of a direction for how that kind of business can be developed and maintained.

4. Though some of capitalism’s characteristics may seem bad, it should actually be expected since it’s in its very nature to produce effects at odds with humanitarian concerns. We should instead think about capitalism’s limitations, and switch our view to a business that could invest its interests outside of the contradictions of capitalism, where social and environmental concerns can be helped.

5. “Selling Nature” calls assumptions into question at the very outset of the essay.

For example, O’Connor points out that to ask what is your relationship to something is to assume that you are separate from that thing. In this way, asking a question such as, “What is humanity’s relationship to nature?” assumes that nature exists outside of humanity. O’Connor surveys how such an assumption is even made, and refers to thoughts stemming out of the Enlightenment to begin.

One of the thinkers he refers to is René Descartes, whose philosophy led to the idea of dualism. For O’Connor, to be able to conceive of the body as separate from the mind helped to confirm the separation of humans from nature. He goes on to inform us that that wasn’t always the case, as exemplified by the attitude of the Apache people.

O’Connor also includes another string of evidence that marks our significant attitude towards nature. According to O’Connor, Nicolaus Copernicus added fuel to the fire by arguing that the sun is the center of the universe, giving us the idea that “the universe runs like a clock according to laws that are independent of human beings” (2). This, also according to O’Connor, made nature seem a collection of resources to be used for the sake of humanity.

As evidentiary as O’Connor’s points seem, his last point about Copernicus’ finding doesn’t constitute a reason for humanity to treat nature as “a collection of lifeless things to be controlled and used for the sake of humanity” (2). In fact, because the universe runs independently of human beings, operating on its own accord and decentering the earth, it rather seems that we should have realized nature as sure, separate, but also as operating regardless of our interests. In other words, it seems more plausible to regard nature as separately working for its own interests, and not as some collection of resources existing to merely serve our personal interests.

Of course, I don’t recognize nature as separate from humanity, but if we were to assign some causal behavior from Copernicus’ discovery, O’Connor leads to a less plausible conclusion. O’Connor uses Copernicus’ discovery to further illuminate the sense that humanity is separate from their universe, which, in a way, at least allows us to conceive of the earth as applicable to our lives, though we should feel selfish while so vehemently doing so.

6. It is especially at the moment in which he introduces Copernicus that O’Connor binds the analogy between capitalism and nature, where decentering humanity from the purpose of the universe meant that we could think of the universe as a supply of raw resources to be used for humanity alone. It is thus similar to capitalism, which “is based on private ownership and commodification (2).

In fact, Copernicus’ discovery is the point at which capitalism and nature merge for O’Connor. Seeing a divide between nature and humanity led to an objectification of nature, which allows capitalists to see natural resources as mere commodities.

O’Connor paints arrows of causality from the conceptualization of nature as separate from humanity. Specifically, he maps a line of causality out of the two contradictions of capitalism. Overproduction leads to economic crises, which lead to labor movements, while underproduction leads to ecological crises, which lead to environmental movements. This explanation frames capitalism as having a domino effect, so that it’s difficult, and in fact impossible, to think of capitalism as a simple point A to point B model. O’Connor urges us to think of capitalism as the complex chain of reactions it is. Without accounting for other complicating and indirect influences, though, this essay still rectifies itself as just a preliminary discussion about the monster, capitalism, and its relationship to nature.

7. It’s strange the way O’Connor begins to forgive capitalism for its “inherent characteristics,” because it is bound to cause unfavorable circumstances. He excuses capitalism’s bad nature as a way of asking, “What do you expect?” In a way, O’Connor seems to suggest that we should be angry with the effects of capitalism, and not capitalism itself. In that case, he creates his own dualism by treating capitalism and its effects as separate entities.