As forças destrutivas do capital: o mito do desenvolvimento sustentável sob os auspícios do neoliberalismo

Abstract

The environmental collapse confronts us with rising economic, political, and social inequalities, the surge of authoritarianism, and the deterioration of the conditions for the existence of human life and other living beings. Contradictorily, we live in societies capable of the highest technological development, while rivers flood homes and lives and histories are buried amid increasingly frequent environmental disasters. Faced with this problem, starting in the 1970s, concern for the environmental issue gained greater global resonance. From this context emerged the concept of sustainability, widely spread through the perception that the economic model and the logic of endless profit generate severe environmental and social impacts. It is within this scenario that the object of study of this work is framed: the concept of sustainability and its limitations in overcoming the contemporary environmental crisis, in light of the legacy of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and key Marxist scholars. In light of this, the problem arises to understand to what extent the concept of sustainability—presented as a response to the contemporary environmental crisis—is capable of addressing the very determinations that produce this crisis within the capitalist mode of production. The hypothesis of this research is that the concept of sustainability assumes an ideological character in the context of neoliberalism, aimed at maintaining the existing order; thus, so-called sustainable development presents itself as a proposal for systemic reform—a temporary attempt to resolve environmental crises that functions merely as a palliative because these measures do not tackle their structural causes. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to understand how the proposal for environmental sustainability, presented as a solution to current drastic climate crises, assumes an ideological and class-based character in the 21st century. The work is structured into two parts: (i) the theoretical foundation of the articulation between three fundamental concepts for understanding the contemporary environmental crisis—ideology, alienation, and nature—based on Marxian texts, especially The German Ideology, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and Capital; and (ii) the analysis showing that economic, political, and climate crises are inherent to the capitalist mode of production and intensify with the fragmentation of social life promoted by neoliberal ideology, drawing from historical contextualization and critical analysis of the concept of sustainability in its economic, political, and social aspects. The qualitative, theoretical-methodological perspective guiding this research is grounded in the Marxian and Marxist legacy, employing historical-dialectical materialism as its method. It proceeds from the assumption that the environmental crisis is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather the expression of inherent contradictions of the bourgeois mode of production, allowing for the grasp of reality in its totality beyond the immediate appearance of phenomena. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels understood the historical and social determinations shaping successive systemic crises, as well as the mediation between human relations and nature through the mode of producing material life. The choice of this topic is justified by the need to analyze sustainability not as a purely technical concept, but as a construct shaped by class tensions and structural contradictions of capitalism.