2014 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Environment and Agriculture

IPCBEE vol. 76 (2014) © (2014) IACSIT Press, Singapore

DOI: 10.7763/IPCBEE. 2014. V76. 15

The Living System and Thermodynamic Disorders of Capitalist

Production

Jhonnathan Zambrano1 and Sandra Tintinago2

1
Environmental Studies Group (GEA), University of Cauca, Colombia
2
University of Cauca, Colombia.

Abstract. This paper is an exploration of the entropy law for a rotation structure between crops and rearing
practices. The idea is to analyze the different linkages established by the farming community in the use of
resources, study the economic conditions and their entropic implications. This analysis attempts to support
the idea of economic use values as a solution to environmental problems, taking into account the entropy law
in disequilibrium systems. In other words, according to the principles of energy dissipation, we will try to
demonstrate that it is possible to reduce ecosystem disorders if we understand the difference of energy flows
between two human practices: use values and exchange values. The result explains the damages to living
system provoked by the capitalism, since its principles do not follow the ecosystem patterns of dissipation of
energy.
Key words: Entropy, Use Value, Order, Exchange Value, Disorder.

1. Introduction
The integration of entropic patterns to economics has been the argument that allows ecological
economics to hold discussions with neoclassical economists, because of their systemic neglect of laws of
thermodynamics. Ecological economics establish the contribution of these laws as an economic restriction:
the economic growth cannot be infinite; it is limited by terrestrial low entropy. In this way they claim that:
first law states that matter and energy inputs are not created from nothing, so they are removed from the
environment. In addition, economic outputs must return in several ways towards the environment. This
argument makes us think about the resource extraction and the pollution of the production system. Moreover,
the second law states that while the input equals output in quantitative terms, there is a qualitative difference:
"the raw material is low entropy matter-energy, while residues are high entropy matter-energy. In addition,
both low entropy resources as sinks for high entropy are finite means in a finite environment, and sinks
cannot be recycled”[1].
These elements have allowed us to understand part of the intricate interaction between market and laws
of thermodynamics. However, ecological economics has not established a critique of the market as an
exploitation system from these elements, but that it is treated as a mechanism that only needs to be redefined
according to sustainability principles. Therefore, they propose to use market tools that are efficient in
distribution, such as exchange or auction. Here, we found some economic approaches which say: imagine “a
state of the economy, [where] production is minimized to maintain a minimum level of stocks” and for these
production levels, it is necessary to set quotas for both resource depletion and total human births. These rates
are assigned according to auction and exchange, reflecting the opinion that while the market "solves the
allocation problem by providing the necessary information and incentive", exogenous strategies support the
problem of optimal scale for terrestrial low entropy[2].


Corresponding author. Tel.: (57) 3167157330; fax: (57-2) 8380762
E-mail addresses: zambranojazu@gmail.com; sandratintinago09@gmail.com
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 Contrary to these positions which sometimes, as we can see, overlap with neoclassical theory (because of
its faith in market efficiency), this paper has a radical conception of ecological economics which considers
markets as exploitation means of the workers and environmental pressure systems. Consequent, just some
redefinitions of market behavior cannot administer the entropic field. Thus, we outline a critical analysis
from the entropy law in nonequilibrium systems, which allows us to understand how, with its daily practices,
a farmer community (indigenous council of Puracé, Cauca, Colombia) can struggle with the market system
and create new forces to change the current entropic disorders.

2. Thermodynamics and Economic Values

2.1. Life and Thermodynamic Theory of Nonequilibrium
The system we will analyze is a far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics structure that has a dissipation
mechanism with consistent behavior. Specifically we are talking about the liaison between the hot sun and
the cold Earth: a temperature gradient that crosses space, and ultimately, after ecosystems use the energy, it
becomes in Earth’s temperature. We have to understand here that a nonequilibrium system has effective
means which dissipate the energy gradient to create life[3].
So, this characteristic applies to every living system (except the deep sea vent ecosystems), which are in
charge of dissipating solar energy, either human or extra-human structures. However, the first has in addition
to direct solar energy, an auxiliary energy fount (past solar energy) composed by industrial inputs. These
elements improve both the ground conditions and the plant capacity to grow, due to the increased availability
of nutrients that allows a better assimilation capability, organization and accumulation of vegetable
biomass[4].
Thus, the human system has two types of inputs: one represents the ecosystem capacity to dissipate
energy gradients, and the other improves such ability. Now it is important to mention that this extra boost has
an economic reason, the creation of economic values. What the community obtains from agriculture is a
labor-value product, which has a realization condition in the market. That is, the result of our studying
system are products with ability to sell them.
However, what the good shows us is neither social relations nor the way that good obtains energy. The
price relations of the product create a mechanism to increased gains, leaving behind the interactions between
nature and human nature. Now, the idea where the products come from is understood.

2.2. Entropy and Exchange Value

Life with its ability to reproduce itself insures that existing dissipative pathways continue, thus it uses
genetic memory (DNA) to allow its survival. In the studied community, we can see this capacity in the need
for potato seeds, which give rise to plant sand to the new generation of tubers. Besides this genetic
contribution, the production system needs a social memory, a category named general division of labor. This
concept establishes the application of human force in a specifically way. Therefore, the seed has both a
genetic determination and a social conditioning[3].
Here we have to analyze that in addition to the role as conditions of production, both human labor and
the environmental are presented as organized shapes. When we talk about ordered elements, we are referring
to complex structures with greater diversity and more hierarchical levels to abet energy degradation[3]. That
is, energy dissipated in the past and orderly in cyclical ways of interrelation.
Human labor and the ecosystem share the distinction of being previous ordinations. But only the first
adds value to the products, because it exerts a conscious wear and furthermore directs the natural dissipation.
Talking about value, nature doesn't have any exchange value; it only has use value[5]. In other words, the
environment gives its ordination to the economic production; it has a use, but it is the human job which
creates a material universe of money.
Under these conditions, the auxiliary energy can be applied to the productive process and, its use is
imbued with many effects both ecologically and economically. For the first category, we note that the
pressure of this kind of energy in form of fertilizers or plaguicides that protect the plant raises the production
beyond the natural soil fertility. In addition, the application of auxiliary energy allows a greater amount of
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plants located in a particular terrain. These two effects are called “overcoming of natural limits” because the
level of disorder generated is higher than the same practices with social relations away from the profit.
As for the economic impact, the capitalist relations dedicated to the production of inputs understand the
buying step as a realization of their own gain. Moreover, the sale of agriculture products, born of the need to
compensate all costs, involves a price system that gives profits to the capitalists (traders or companies) which
buy such goods. This process creates a negative difference between the labor-value and the price of
agriculture products. Both stages are called "value extraction" because they work to pay the other’s gain, and
later, they receive less than they worked to create their own products.
Thus, both the overcoming of natural limits and value extraction are effects caused by the participation
of exchange value, that is, poor farmers facing a mercantile world of increased gains. It is important to
understand, how these patterns go against order conditions of the production system as a whole. Firstly, they
affect the capacity of human survival because the worker does not receive what he needs to survive or for
auto-realization[6]; secondly, they overcome and damage the previous order that has served as the basis for
dissipation of energy in agriculture[7].
Let us now ask the following: how can a social system survive without care for its energy conditions of
order? The answer lead us to analyze the role of other production ways far from exchange value and its
monetary cycle.

2.3. Entropy and Use Value

If other variables are constant, the farmers got from the stages we have seen their agricultural good,
which is sold to intermediary capitalists. Behind the sold products, there is an edaphic order which remains
as persistence (adsorption, desorption and diffusion) part of the auxiliary energy that was used for
commercial production. The ordered system recycles part of this energy, although it is important to mention
that the other portion is mobilized (as leaching, volatization, wind and runoff) causing contamination in other
ecosystems.
The energy that remains in the soil environment where it was applied, now can be reused for crops of
traditional-familiar products. Thus, economically the residue becomes fixed capital to connect the next work
processes. The rotatory structure allows the existence of new plants as dissipation of energy. However, here
there is a particularity.
The system based on exchange value has created damages to the productive system as a whole. What is
demonstrated in the gist of the rotation: rest the soil, a terrain cannot maintain two or three continuous cycles
of potato crops. Then the use values (for instance, familiar products) take the role of system reparations;
these latter are based on new dissipation that return the quality of previous conditions of order. In this new
step, the workers need to care their products with different processes that increase the energy captured but
without damaging the current conditions that enable the production.
Use values repair the ecosystem capacity to perpetuate itself, through three characteristics: first, the use
of soil fertility for crops; second, the consumption of industrial waste which prevents the contamination of
water and soils with different vocation. Third, use of organic fertilizers in this kind of reparatory production
increases the capacity of cationic exchange, which increases the persistence and reduces the leaching, it
controls also the soil moisture by limiting the rate of evaporation, protects the soil from strong climate
changes, and improves the activity of microorganisms and earthworms[8].
This thermodynamically efficient practice is perceived by the social system in the form of solidarity
practices. The community strengthens the family diet through the cultivation of traditional products; it
promotes the pays in kind for community workers; natural cures for animals and people, and finally the
relations between producers through gifts, bartering, and selling fresh products in the village.
However, it is necessary to consider a crucial point: the reduction of production also decreases the
dissipation of energy, passing it consequently in a greater volume to the Earth’s temperature. Here we find
our first contradiction: a system of production based on exchange value which dissipates more energy but in
contrast harms the order as a condition of production; and the natural fertility which retrieves the ecosystem
capacity to survive but at the expense of having a low level of solar energy trapped.
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 To understand this contradiction and the human resolution practices, note the characteristics of
successional processes in an ecosystem:
1. More energy captured- because the more energy that flows into a system, the greater the potential for
degradation
2. More energy flow activity within the system: - the more energy that flows within and through a
system, the greater the potential for degradation
3. More cycling of energy and material: number of cycles, length of cycles, the amount of material
flowing in cycles and turnover time of cycles.
4. Higher average trophic structure: longer trophic food chains, species will occupy higher trophic
levels and greater trophic efficiencies
5. Higher respiration and transpiration
6. Larger ecosystem biomass
7. More types of organisms (higher diversity) (based on [3]).
The system of exchange value brings increments in successional processes 1, 2, 5 and 6 while presents
deteriorations in the other features. Note that properties 3, 4 and 7 are reduced because the economic system
based on increasing productivity promotes the monoculture. Meanwhile, natural level of soil fertility presents
a gradual growth in all seven points, although it has the disadvantage that its absolute level of energy
captured is lower because the reduction of inputs and its consequent environmental pressure. Now, from their
practices people have developed a principle which is located between these two extremes, in this study we
have called it: potentiation. This is a level that quantitatively is beyond the natural fertility, but it does not
limit the dissipation pathways since it promotes the energy cycles, and the resident components are not
harmful to the environment. In sum, this level of potentiation (sum of use value practices) has the entropic
benefits of the natural fertility of the soil blended with controlled elements of exchange value.
It is not possible to calculate the exact amount of production that represents a level of potentiation
because it depends on different particularities. What determines the distinction between practices of use
value (potentiation limit) and exchange value is the existence of a retribution (either monetary or not) to
workers and environment away from the social conditioning structures. This statement allows us to
comprehend the different ways in which economic values are presented. For example, the commercial crop
of potatoes may have a use value: animal feed, food for different families and fertilization of terrains. Here
the sense of use values is different from being repairers (like we saw before with traditional crops); instead,
the logic of use values is remove from the process of valorization and from environmental pressure, a part of
its massive production to create an interaction between human beings and nature: the evolution of the
ecosystem reduced to fleeting practices. In both cases (repairers and removers), they are against the social
conditioning systems.
If we continue, after this rotation stages the community uses a soil rest period. Whereupon, the social
system acts again as an organized system which dissipates energy. In this case, after using the natural fertility
of the soil plus the waste of industrial inputs, the natural vegetation grows as fallow. Its economic utility
comes from its development for livestock; the community waits roughly one month to consume the grass as a
mean of production. Here the economic interest extends the trophic chain. Let's look at this process more
closely.
In the environment, the trophic chains connect its members spontaneously, but in a rearing system the
human being selects some animals and focuses most of energy in them. The rearing decision is based on
regional economic conditions and natural parameters. For example, the studied community raises cattle and
sheep to produce milk and wool (due to tradition and altitude of the area). The economic selection creates
thus a "social trophic chain". However, we have to differentiate between the two kinds of value to understand
this process. First, the community choices say what kind of product is suitable to get an income, given
natural conditions: it is a reason of exchange value. Second, how to apply human force for getting mutualism
relations between the chain trophic and the community is a decision of use value. Consequently, we note that
decisions are separated according to the qualities of the social relations.
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 Here we have something interesting: the rearing system is both a reparatory mean and a producer of
tradable goods. That double character creates a new constraint structure to capture the labor-value (low, fixed
price of milk) and pressure the environment (for example, with levels beyond the harvest index or waste
contamination). However, it also creates new ways to defend the system; for instance, degradation of wastes,
family feed and creation of solidarity links between workers to reduce high investments in rearing systems.
The rotation process finishes with livestock and begins again with potato crops. We see in this way, how
every stage has its own contradictions between exchange value and use value, their interactions create a
functional production system with different distributions of energy; the most part to feed the capitalism
system and the remainder to maintain the living system responsible to do that.

3. Conclusions
We have seen the rotation system and its compensation between the damage levels and the use value
practices, which allow it a continuous operation. However, the accumulated processes bring an entropic
effect different from the natural way. In the ecosystems without human presence, the entropy increases
outward the living system; instead, in a production system, the entropy expands both inward and outward,
which creates need for repair and defense systems. This provokes the production mode continue but at the
cost of its ability to evolve.
The absence of that evolutionary capacity (towards an ecological and social superior level of order)
makes the system focus on increasing economic gains. This huge quantity of labor-value created by the
farmers is distributed mostly to city capitalists, and only a minor portion returns to them. Here, the market
system is in charge of distributing such proportions. We understand that the existence of gains has the
condition of stagnation in the energy dissipation principle.
When the ecological economics sees these market features, it creates indicators trying to correct the
environmental damage. We believe that this intention is valid even when ecological economists use market
prices to calculate costs and environmental impacts; the problem is when they do not take into account value
relations. Therefore, our contribution, where we find a meeting point of the two theories (ecological
economics and Marxism) establishes the following points: first, identify systemic abuses against the
community, and, second, through ecological indicators try to understand how human practices overcome the
exchange value. In this way ecological economists will deepen in the social consequences that help them to
establish historical proposals based on real practices (and its measures) and not on inequitable and disorderly
structures of market.

4. Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the group CDKN (Climate & Development Knowledge Network) which allowed the
initial visits to the community. To the closest institution of University of Cauca, the Environmental Studies
Group (GEA) which supported us with their opinions understanding some entropic concepts and system
dynamics. Especially, we want to thank the community indigenous council, for their cooperation with this
study. They always offered us a sense of coexistence and mutual support.

5. References
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[2] P. Burkett, Marx and nature: A red and green perspective. 1999, USA: Palgrave macmillan.
[3] E.D. Scheneider and J.J. Kay, Life as a Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Mathl. Comput.
Modelling, 1994. 19(6-8): p. 25-48.
[4] P. Bifani, Medio Ambiente y desarrollo sostenible, I.d.E.p.p.A.L.y.Á. (IEPALA), Editor. 1999: Madrid, España.
[5] K. Marx, Contribución a la crítica de la economía política, ed. S. XXI. 2003, México.
[6] K. Marx, Manuscritos económico-filosófico de 1844. 2004, Argentina: Colihue Clásica
[7] P. Burkett, Marxism and ecological economics. Toward a red and Green political economy, ed. B.A. Publisher.
2006, Boston, USA.
[8] M. Bueno, Ahorrar agua en la agricultura ecológica, in Holística2006: Madrid, España. p. 3.
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