CLASS CONFLICT AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Kenneth A. Gould
Department of Sociology
St. Lawrence University
Canton, New York 13617
USA
E-mail: kgould@stlawu.edu
Phone: 315-229-5395
Fax: 315-229-5803

Abstract : The distribution of environmental hazards by social class is a normal outcome

for capitalist economies. Markets left to function on their own will normally distribute
goods and services on the basis of wealth. The economic benefits of production are
distributed upward in the stratification system. Conversely, the environmental hazards
generated by production are distributed downward. Because owners, managers and
investors are able to live in relatively clean environments, they are at the lowest risk of
bearing the health and quality of life costs resulting from production processes. These
same individuals have the greatest power to change production processes to reduce
environmental risks. Because of their insulation from the consequences of their
production decisions, owners, managers and investors have the least incentive to make
pro-environmental changes to production practices. Conversely, workers, who have the
greatest exposure to environmental hazards and therefore have the greatest incentive to
change production practices, have the least power to institute those changes. As a result,
those empowered to make pro-environmental change are the least likely to see the
necessity of doing so. Those most likely to see pro-environmental change as necessary are
least empowered to effect those changes. Therefore, adequately addressing environmental
injustice will require shifting the balance of production decision-making power away
from an affluent minority and toward the working-class and the poor. As such efforts to
shift the class basis of control of the means of production are likely to meet intense
resistance, environmental injustice will not be eliminated without substantial class
conflict.

Key words: environmental justice, class conflict, distribution, environmental movements

Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

Introduction: Environmental Racism

Most of the literature addressing issues of environmental justice focuses primarily

on the role of institutional, cultural and individual racism in directing environmental and

public health hazards toward politically disenfranchised racial and ethnic groups (Bryant

and Mohai 1992, Bullard 1990; 1993; 1994, Bryant 1995, Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss

2001). The term „environmental racism“ was originated to specifically describe

race-based discrimination in the siting of hazardous facilities and the remediation of

environmental hazards in the United States. Numerous studies have clearly indicated that

in the United States, race is a better predictor of where environmentally hazardous

facilities will be located than is social class (Bryant and Mohai 1992, Bullard 1994).

Various manifestations of racism in environmental policy, real estate markets, lending

institutions and employment generate extreme levels of racial segregation in residential

patterns (Massey and Denton 1993). This system of „residential apartheid“ is a key factor

in allowing the owners of and investors in production and disposal facilities to target

communities of color for a disproportionate share of the environmental and public health

costs of production (Bullard, Grigsby and Lee 1994). At the same time, the existence of

racially segregated housing patterns allows for the environmental protection of

European-American communities, who reap a greater share of the economic benefits of

production while shifting the ecological and health costs to communities of color.

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

In addition to environmental racism acting as a factor in and of itself, race plays a

key role in the distribution of environmental hazards in its synergistic impact on class

stratification. The elimination of specifically environmental racism would still leave

communities of color in the United States with a disproportionate share of the

environmental costs of production as long as racial discrimination in employment,

housing, education and other sectors was allowed to continue, by structurally forcing a

disproportionate share of people of color into the lower socioeconomic strata. As a result,

ending environmental racism will only relieve a portion of the disproportionate

environmental burden directed toward communities of color. Only the elimination of

racial discrimination in all sectors of society can produce a racially equitable distribution

of environmental hazards. While it is the obligation of those engaged in ecological

resistance struggles to fight to end environmental racism per se, and racial discrimination

more generally, even success in those struggles would not eliminate environmental

injustice. Underlying cultural racism and its institutional manifestations is an economic

structure that routinely and regularly distributes environmental hazards downward toward

the lower socioeconomic strata.

Environmental Justice Economics

The distribution of environmental hazards by social class is a normal outcome for

capitalist economies. Markets, left to function on their own without state intervention,

will normally distribute goods and services on the basis of wealth. The treadmill of

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

production generates both economic benefits and environmental hazards (Schnaiberg

1980, Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). The economic benefits of production tend to be

distributed up in the stratification system. Owners, managers and investors reap a greater

share of the economic benefits generated by the production of goods and services than do

workers. Conversely, the environmental hazards generated by the production of goods

and services tend to be distributed down in the stratification system (Schnaiberg and

Gould 1994). The contamination of water, land and air by toxic industrial effluents, and

their consequent negative impacts on human health disproportionately impact workers

and the unemployed, while owners, managers and investors are able to use the wealth

gained from production to purchase housing in environmentally safe areas. Those whom

cannot afford to move to such areas are forced to live with environmental hazards. In this

way, each round of economic growth tends to increase the gap between rich and poor, as

well as increase the gap between environmentally safe and environmentally hazardous

residential spaces (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). Similarly, the best jobs in the production

process tend to be awarded to the already wealthier individuals, while the dirtiest and

most hazardous jobs are reserved for the poor. The poor and working-class therefore find

themselves at the greatest environmental risk both on the job and at home, while the

wealthy remain relatively protected in both locations (Szasz 1994). Managers tend to live

at some distance from potentially hazardous production facilities, and usually upwind and

upstream from industrial effluent flows. Workers tend to live close to production

facilities, and downwind and down stream from effluent flows (Mumford 1934). Workers

and their families are thereby exposed to carcinogens and other toxins resulting from

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

production, while managers, owners and investors are not.

Because owners, managers and investors are able to live in relatively clean

environments, they are often at the lowest risk of bearing the health and quality of life

costs resulting from production processes. These are the same individuals who have the

greatest power to change production processes to reduce environmental and health risks.

Because of their insulation from the consequences of their production decisions, owners,

managers and investors have the least incentive to make changes to production practices

that would reduce negative environmental and health impacts. Conversely, workers, who

have the greatest exposure to environmental hazards and therefore have the greatest

incentive to change production practices to be more protective of human health and the

environment, have the least power to institute those changes. The distribution of power in

production facilities mirrors the distribution of wealth, but is inversely related to the

distribution of environmental risk. As a result, those empowered to make

pro-environmental change occur are the least likely group to see the necessity of doing so.

Those most likely to see pro-environmental change as necessary are the least empowered

to effect those changes (Gould, Schnaiberg and Weinberg 1996).

What makes it possible to distribute environmental hazards to workers and the

poor is the class segregation of housing locations. Only by segregating the working-class

and the poor into specific residential locations away from those of the wealthy are

owners, managers and investors able to direct environmental contamination toward the

lower socioeconomic classes and away from themselves. Were residential patterns not

segregated by class, environmental hazards and their negative public health impacts

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

would by necessity tend to be distributed evenly across the stratification system. The

class-based segregation of housing is a normal outcome of the functioning of a capitalist

economy in which housing is distributed on the basis of wealth. Housing costs tend be

lower in areas in close proximity to environmentally hazardous facilities such as

industrial plants, waste dumps, and sewage treatment plants. In general, the higher the

known and obvious environmental risks in an area, the lower the cost of housing.

Housing costs in relatively environmentally safe areas at greater distances from hazardous

facilities tend to command a higher price in housing markets. As a result, those earning

no or low wages are constrained in their choice of housing location and restricted to

living in those areas with greater environmental and health risks. Those earning higher

wages or receiving their income from investments have greater freedom to choose among

more and less desirable housing locations. With the option to do so, wealthy individuals

will tend to choose to live where environmental risks are lower. If an area previously

believed to offer low risk of exposure to environmental hazards is later found to be

contaminated, those with greater wealth will be able to move to a less hazardous location.

Those with less wealth will be forced to remain in the contaminated area (Szasz 1994).

In terms of the siting of new potentially hazardous facilities, similar processes

operate. Production facilities will tend to locate where land values are lowest in order to

reduce construction costs. Lower land values will be found in precisely those locations

where the poor and working-class can afford to live. Higher land values will be found

where owners, managers and investors can afford to live in relatively environmentally

sound locations. New environmental hazards are therefore likely to be placed in close

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

proximity to the residential areas inhabited by those near the bottom of the stratification

system. Those areas that are attractive as residential locations for those with the wealth to

avoid environmental hazards are likely to be the least attractive locations for installation

of new production facilities that are associated with increased environmental and public

health costs.

Because capitalist economies normally generate class-segregated communities,

the poor and working-class are concentrated in areas typified by high levels of

environmental risk and low levels of wealth. Poor communities face limited economic

options in terms of type of employment and remuneration from that employment.

Concentrating the unemployed and underemployed in specific locations creates

communities of economic desperation. Under such condition, poor and working-class

communities are structurally coerced into accepting any economic development initiative

promising an increase in local employment. As a result, poor communities are less free to

reject specific proposals for the siting of production or disposal facilities within their

communities than are wealthier communities where new employment opportunities are a

less pressing concern. The less wealthy a community, the more likely it is to be accepting

of new environmental hazards where those hazards come with the promise of economic

benefit. It is not that poor communities are less concerned about the protection of their

health and environment, but rather that they have less structural freedom to act on their

environmental and health concerns when faced with the consequences of absolute

poverty. Conversely, wealthy communities are no more environmental or health

conscious than poor communities, but with little need for additional local economic

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

development, they are more structurally free to prioritize their environmental values

under conditions where their basic needs are already being met. Class segregated

residential housing patterns generate a spatial distribution of economic development need.

Environmentally hazardous facilities will be most attractive to communities with the

highest level of economic desperation (Gould 1991). The ability of wealthy communities

to reject hazardous facilities due to low economic need, combined with the desperation of

poor communities for any increase in employment opportunity, reinforces the downward

distribution of environmental hazards, increasing both the environmental protection of the

rich and the environmental degradation of the poor.

It is important to bear in mind that these distributional processes are not

unfortunate accidents, but rather a normal part of a capitalist economy. Left to its own

logic, market forces will normally produce residential environmental protection for the

wealthy and residential environmental degradation for the working-class and poor. This

class-based distribution of housing allows industry to injure the health of lower

socioeconomic classes while generating wealth for higher socioeconomic classes and

protecting their health and environment. In this treadmill of production, the less economic

benefit you receive from production, the more your health is injured by that production.

Environmental Justice Politics

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

In capitalist societies, wealth is a primary component of power. Those with greater

economic power have a greater ability to influence the state, even in ostensibly

democratic political systems (Domhoff 1998). Power to control patterns of capital

investment, to control the creation and distribution of employment, to finance electoral

campaigns, and to bribe officials provides the wealthy with greater access to, and

influence over public policy decision-makers. While greater political power accrues to

those with greater wealth, greater wealth also accrues to those with greater political

power. Residential segregation by class concentrates the politically powerful in specific

communities, while simultaneously concentrating the politically less powerful in other

communities. The class-based distribution of political power and the class-based

distribution of housing location synergistically generate a spatial distribution of power. In

theory, it should be possible to map this distribution as a social geography of political

power.

The distribution of distinct spatial locations of political power within and between

various communities is a normal outgrowth of the functioning of a capitalist economy.

This result produces communities with limited capacities to reject the imposition of

environmental hazards while simultaneously creating communities with enormous

capacity to control their own economic development and environmental trajectories. The

more powerful communities will be home to politicians, lawyers, doctors and other

professionals whom may be mobilized as a political resource in efforts to repel the siting

of an environmentally hazardous facility. The less powerful less wealthy communities are

less likely to have such human capital resources immediately at their disposal. This lack

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

of professional human capital resources makes those communities more vulnerable to

state and industry efforts to site a locally unwanted land use in close proximity to their

residential location. This unequal spatial distribution of power may operate in two ways.

First, those seeking to locate a hazardous facility may apply their sense of the spatial

geography of power to choose siting locations where low levels of effective political

resistance are likely. In this way, the existence of potentially mobilizeable power is

sufficient to keep environmental hazards out of wealthier communities. Poorer, less

powerful communities are therefore more likely to be targeted for hazardous facility

siting as decision-makers anticipate the political resistance of more powerful

communities. Second, more powerful communities, if chosen as the preferred location for

the siting of such a facility may mobilize their economic and political resources to

effectively defeat the siting effort. Less powerful poor communities, lacking the economic

resources, political connections, and professional human capital resources which may

bolster an effort to prevent a facility siting, will be less able to mount a successful

rejection campaign. The outcome of the unequal spatial distribution of political power is

a further reinforcement of the economic tendency to distribute environmental and public

health risks to poor and working-class communities.

Given that the class-based distribution of environmental and public health threats

is a normal outcome of the every day functioning of capitalist societies, only political

intervention aimed at disrupting the normal functioning of capitalist economies can

protect or remediate environmental hazards in poor and working-class communities. Such

communities will need to organize politically and mobilize resources both internal and

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

external to those communities to resist the imposition of ecological risks and remediate

existing hazards existent within those localities (Levine 1982). This local political

mobilization will have to take the form of sustained resistance in perpetuity as long as the

underlying economic structure remains unchanged (Gould et al 1996). Single victories in

specific environmental justice struggles will be insufficient to ensure the long-term

ecological integrity of communities. The logic of the capitalist economy necessitates that

poor and working-class communities will be under constant threat as increasing levels of

environmental disruption are continually structurally directed downward in the

socioeconomic stratification system. As long as the industrial treadmill of production

remains in place, any political demobilization will result in the reimposition of

environmental hazards on the lower classes.

Because there is an unequal distribution of power even among communities of the

poor and working-class, those communities with greater political resource mobilization

capacity may be able to repel or remediate environmental threats to their communities,

but may do so at the expense of more disempowered communities. The distribution of

political mobilization combined with the distributional logic of capitalism will direct

environmental hazards to the poorest communities with the lowest capacities for political

resistance. As a result, the success of the working-class in generating effective political

resistance to the capitalist distribution of environmental threats may come at the expense

of the poor, who are likely to have lower capacities for generating effective ecological

resistance. In such a political economy, it will be necessary to mobilize the poorest and

therefore most vulnerable communities first. External political resources must focus on

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

increasing the ecological resistance capacity of the most vulnerable communities in order

to begin to reverse the downward distribution of ecological threats. Only by beginning

with the communities occupying the lowest level of the socioeconomic stratification

system will it be possible to chase environmental risk up that stratification system toward

those empowered to change the nature of production systems. This implies that ecological

resistance strategies must focus on those environmental conflicts in which the imbalance

of power between those reaping the economic benefits of production and those paying the

ecological costs is greatest. However, it should be quite clear that those conflicts are

precisely the ones where victory is least probable. This requires that those who are

engaged in ecological resistance struggles but who are external to the threatened

communities harness and direct their resources toward those communities and those

conflicts in which effective resistance appears to be least possible. By empowering

communities from the bottom up toward the middle and upper classes, the downward

distribution of environmental harm necessitated by the logic of capitalism can be

constrained, directing environmental costs toward those reaping the economic benefits

resulting from production.

The political task facing those who would prevent the downward

distribution of environmental risk within the context of a capitalist economy is

gargantuan. Nothing less than the effective mobilization and political empowerment of

every working-class and poor community with a given society, and ultimately across the

globe will be necessary to force those who control the system of production to live with

and address the negative ecological and public health consequences of their economic

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

growth agendas. And that level of political empowerment would have to be maintained

indefinitely, as any demobilized community will immediately become the target for

environmental hazards. Of course, if that level of empowerment of the poor and

working-class were ever achieved, it might then be conceivable to move from addressing

the downward distribution of environmental costs to issues of the upward distribution of

economic benefits. A more equitable distribution of the economic benefits of production,

for which the ecological costs are incurred, would further redress the imbalance of power

between class-based communities.

What is clearly implied in such a discussion of changing the patterns of

distribution of ecological costs and economic benefits is a fundamental transformation of

national and transnational economic structures. The distributional logic of capitalism,

now under the banner of global neoliberalism, requires a reduction or elimination of

political intrusion into the functioning of market forces (Daly 1996). Those market forces

dictate that class-based environmental injustice remain a normal feature of social life on

this planet. In such an economy, environmental harm is simply added to the list of

sanctions against the poor along with lack of access to health care, adequate housing,

adequate nutrition, and education. States will have to intervene in the free market to

reduce or eliminate environmental harm done to poor and working-class communities, in

violation of neoliberal ideology, in order to preempt more structurally directed efforts to

reform or replace capitalist economies. If class-based environmental injustice is a normal

result of market forces operating without state constraint, states must be forced by

citizen-workers to intrude on those market forces in the arena of environmental protection

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

and remediation if environmental justice issues are to be adequately addressed (Gould et

al 1996). Environmental justice is fundamentally incompatible with the logic of

capitalism. An alternative social justice logic must be imposed upon capitalist economic

systems in the arena of environmental protection, or capitalism will have to be rejected in

favor of an economic structure whose logic tends to produce social justice outcomes.

Conclusions: Revolutionary Pragmatism

Along a number of dimensions, the transition from a growth oriented capitalist

economy to a social justice oriented sustainable economy appears to be less possible at

this point in history than ever before. Ironically, the necessity for such a transition has

never been clearer, and the consequences of failure to make such a transition have never

been so ominous. Ecological resistance strategies rooted in an environmental justice

agenda may prove to be a key component in the Promethean effort to force a

transformation of the economic structure on those whom control, maintain, and benefit

from that structure (O’Connor 1998). The fusion of production and place politics

manifest in calls for environmental equity represents a tangible threat to the logic of

capitalism. In rejecting the trade-off between ecological use-values and exchange-values

imposed on citizen-workers by the existing political economy, environmental justice

advocates have begun to forge a new vision of a socially just and ecologically sustainable

social order (Gould et al 1996). That vision is a compelling one for the millions of people

world wide who find that the existing economic order leaves their basic needs unmet,

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

while degrading the natural life support systems upon which they depend. However, the

political task of engaging in a protracted and boundless conflict to replace the existing

socioeconomic order has only just begun. At this stage of what will inevitably be a long

and difficult struggle, it is important to focus upon what is conceivably achievable in the

short run without losing sight of long-term goals.

In the immediate future, environmental justice advocates can work to empower

the most vulnerable communities as a starting point from which to force ecological

degradation upward in the stratification system form those least responsible for ecological

harm toward those most responsible for the creation of ecological degradation. This

implies that the political task begins in the poorest communities in those countries where

socioeconomic inequality is greatest. The process of community empowerment must

begin at the bottom and work its way up toward power holders. In the short term, this

implies that protection of the poor will initially come at the expense of the working class,

and that protection of the working class will come at the expense of the middle class. In

an effort to socioecologically swim upstream against the normal flow of market forces

such short-term outcome are perhaps unavoidable. In the longer term, as the political

logic of environmental justice pushes back the distributional logic of capitalism,

environmental and public health threats will become more socially visible and more

politically relevant to those segments of society with greater access to the

decision-making mechanisms of states and corporations. As environmental harm becomes

an increasing social reality for power holders and their families, there attention to the

negative ecological and health consequences of their production decisions will by

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

necessity be increased. If siting of hazardous facilities is moved closer to treadmill elites

as a result of the effective ecological resistance of less wealthy communities, those elites

will have to either crush ecological resistance from below, or reduce the level of

environmental harm generated by the production facilities which they control. For most

owners, managers and investors, ecological disruption and public health threats have been

conveniently out of sight and out of mind, made by the logic of capitalism into a problem

of the poor and working-class (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). What a successful

environmental justice struggle can do is to physically and intellectually move these

threats closer to the homes and consciousness of those empowered to reduce those

threats. The political effort of environmental justice can in that way be conceptualized as

an effort to raise the consciousness of treadmill elites by raising their level of

environmental risk.

There are, of course, no guarantees that treadmill elites will in fact choose to

reorganize production around the goal of ecological integrity simply because they and

their families become increasingly vulnerable to the harms that their production systems

generate. After all, the trade-off between ecological integrity and economic gain is much

better for them than it is for the poor and working class. They may, in the end, choose to

live with greater environmental and health risks as part of the cost of gaining the

enormous wealth and power that the capitalist economy generates for them. However, the

process of moving that risk up through the stratification system may effectively recruit all

other classes to the environmental justice struggle, as the trade-off between ecological

risk and economic gain gets progressively worse for non-elites. Under such conditions,

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Class Conflict and Environmental Justice K. A. Gould

the political will of the great majority of citizen-workers may become too great for elites

to bear, forcing them to restructure production and severely constrain the market logic

which currently makes environmental injustice inevitable and unavoidable.

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