35.7 – Double Movement: Protective Responses against Cost Shifting

Progressive political movements and workers unions can be understood as protective response against cost shifting. Since cost shifting is rooted in capitalist accounting practices and laws, this can be understood as a “double movement”, meaning a movement against the core institution of capitalism. This movement can be interpreted as protecting the social provisioning process of human needs from the completely dehumanized institution of capitalist accounting that only conserves financial capital. This is a kind of social-ecological conservationism of the lasting sources of wealth, that is, nature and the Human.

This struggle is often carried out by those affected most from cost shifting if they are still strong enough to carry out this fight or if they receive help from others. There are many examples of civil society organizations, political parties, and to some extent even governments that revolt against cost shifting. Under conditions of the neoliberal predator State (see above) it is often a matter of politics and context whether or not cost shifting is challenged. For example, when the government of Hawaii sued the oil company Aloha over spreading misinformation concerning global warming and thereby shifting costs to society this is the result of local politics. At the national or international level this is not yet happening.

Environmental movements, such as Extinction Rebellion, fight cost shifting not just through political protest and civil disobedience. They also increasingly resort to the judicial system as this is perceived to be less corrupted by corporate interests than the political system. For example, a youth group from Portugal has recently sued several European governments in the High Court for Human Rights in The Hague for violation of their human dignity due to failures to prevent global warming. Another case involves a Peruvian farmer who sues German energy giant EON for property rights violations. His farm has been washed away from melting glacial waters, which he attributes to global warming caused to a considerable extent by companies burning of fossil fuels. He is supported by activist environmental lawyers from Hamburg who have taken on his case largely free of charge.