Nonhuman Labor: Photosynthesis

Labor of Nature, Labor of Humanity

Karl Marx defines labor as “exclusively human,” stating that “Nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man.”¹ He dissects the relationship between nature and humans around use-value and exchange-value, and labor, specifically human labor, transforms natural substances into commodities. In Marx’s anthropocentric view, no animals in labs, plants by streets, or bacteria in soil, exist in the story of labor. The philosopher Bruno Latour once asked, “where could you find, before today, a Marxist view of earthworms?”²

Both Latour and the scholar Timothy Morton see that the exclusion of ecological-scale problems in Marx’s commitment has resembled that of capitalism: soil to be more fertile, production to be more efficient.³ The productivity of earthworms, plants, and soil—the work of “Earth Others”—is equated with human labor: they are both externalized and become spontaneous, machine-like processes. Labor, as Marx states, has no existence apart from a capacity of their bodily existence.⁴ When treated as external beings and alienated bodies, laborers, whether human or nonhuman, lack their sensations and specificity. In this sense, there is no difference between microbes, silkworms, or factory workers; capitalism computes their value based on how and what they produce.

In an anthropocentric society, natural productivity is often taken for granted. Some economists, such as David Ricardo, view nature as functional, serviceable, and unexchangeable: “nothing is paid for the use of the air, of heat, and of water, the assistance which they afford us, adds nothing to value in exchange.”⁵ Nature seems to always give without ever receiving or asking for any return. In “the world monetary civilization,” geological and biological resources are perceived as free and infinite.⁶ However, to argue the eternity of nature is sophistic; it becomes an excuse to extract land and ocean and drag nonhumans into capital accumulation. 

Economy of Nature, Economy from the Sun

In the mid 19th century, the biologist Ernst Haeckel coined “ecology” as “the economy of nature”—the investigation of the total relations of organisms to their environment.⁷ Following Haeckel’s assertion, nonhumans are included in the scope of economy. But perhaps we can consider the inverse: the foundation of economy stands upon nonhumans. 

Life’s energy first burns in the remote depth of the sky. “Solar energy is the source of life’s exuberant development.”⁸ The radiation from the Sun dispenses energy in the form of light and heat, reaching the Earth, being passed to plants and animals, and becoming the substance of human wealth. In The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille argues that the general economy is solar rather than human. Energy, whether edible, combustible, or compostable, originates from the Sun. Fed by the Sun, photosynthetic beings—bacteria, algae, and plants—transmute sunlight into themselves and complex energetic cycles. The living organisms maintain life and determine the play of energy on the globe’s surface. Besides assimilating energy for their own growth, they create excess, surplus, a reserve of matter that turns into production and overproduction in human society. Humans, as consumers, do not own what we spend; “ownership rests with the biosphere.”⁹ 

Photosynthesis

“In everyday life, we used to speak of humans as individuals, living and moving freely on the planet, building up their own culture and history,” the biochemist Vladimir Vernadsky wrote in his essay on biosphere and noösphere, “Such a concept failed to reckon with the natural laws of the biosphere.”¹⁰ All organisms are connected within the circulation of matter and energy, living on the spherical surface of the Earth.¹¹ If we take a look at the Earth’s history, life appeared as a unique planetary phenomenon, and photosynthesis is the indispensable function that has paved the way for the evolution of life. Around 2.6 billion years ago, the proliferation of cyanobacteria, one of the archean bacteria able to utilize the water and oxidize it to release oxygen, began consistently producing oxygen molecules into the atmosphere, poisoning anaerobic bacteria, and modifying the atmosphere.¹² After around 300 million years of work, the composition approached that of the present atmosphere, containing nearly one-fifth oxygen, supporting the rising of aerobic life and ultimately, the evolution of multicellularity. 

Photosynthesis, now primarily occurring in plants, algae, and the most resilient species—cyanobacteria, from ocean to land, incessantly excretes oxygen into the atmosphere and recycles the basic elements for the metabolism of most animals and plants. 

However, compared to human activities, photosynthesis, as part of the universal labor of ecosystem, is often invisible. The estrangement among the photosynthesis process, photosynthetic organisms, and their products—the forests, the floating oxygen, the carbon deposits—are often seen as natural resources owned and managed by humans. According to Marx, the separation between products and labor causes alienation, the fundamental injustice underlying the capitalist system.¹³ This kind of alienation is intensified for the photosynthetic beings, isolating their connection to the materiality of the Earth and rupturing the interdependence between humans and photosynthetic allies. The rupture underlines the variant modes of dualism of human and nature that have exacerbated with the climate crisis. 

Exploitation or Incorporation

“Burning like a cool green fire,” Margulis described how photosynthetic beings transmute sunlight into themselves.¹⁴ The reserved and surplused energy has been stored in the layers of sedimentary rocks, presented as fossil fuel that is dubbed “black gold.” The development of human civilization built upon the speed of burning fossil fuel has unearthed the hoarded organic treasure into the human economy. The heritage of carbon content fixed by ancient photosynthetic life has been being exploited to the endless explosion of human evolution.

Coal, oil, and natural gas take millions of years to form, but they burn in seconds to produce energy that eventually convert to money. While these nonrenewable resources are consumed, humans now need a new kind of solar economy: an accelerated cycle of matter and energy without geologic delay.

Biofuel, labeled as a renewable resource, has been greeted with great expectations. It has two types of products, ethanol and biodiesel, serving as substitutes for fossil fuels. Ethanol is made from the by-product of photosynthesis—cornstarch and sugar; while biodiesel is produced more directly using oily plants and algae.¹⁵ The hype of biofuel undertakes its feature of sustainability for producing less carbon dioxide. The term “Sustainability” works for human economics, aiming for better human development in this world, but its essence that lies in the exploitation of photosynthetic life into money does not change. The techniques invented for long-lasting production still embed the slow violence enacted upon biological sources. 

In the mechanism of today’s economics, it is hard to think of a kinship that is not exhausted in the capitalist system. There is a need for an inclusive theory. Ecological awareness emerged in the 18th century, melting the boundary between humanity and nature. It is something that penetrates our bodies, feelings, and minds, amidst the rapid progression of disciplines including chemistry, biology, and geology. In the 1920s, the geochemist Vernadsky proposed the concept of Biosphere, which portrays the “living matter” instead of “life” as the totality of living organisms, functioning as geological forces that shape the Earth’s surface.¹⁶ In the late 20th century, the scientist James Lovelock and the microbiologist Lynn Margulis co-developed the concept of Gaia, a self-regulating biosphere, a homeostasis living entity involving the atmosphere, water, and soil.¹⁷ The interconnection of life, both in the ocean and on the land, works and associates together to recycle the basic elements like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, responding as a whole to cosmic energy of the Sun. Thinking of “we,” humans, as a species being—Homo sapiens, we inhale the waste of photosynthetic life—oxygen—and exhale the food for them—carbon dioxide. In the “real” world, living matters are alive based on spontaneous incorporating–symbiosis to thrive on this oxygen-rich planet. Such a holistic perspective that Gaia brings may alter our mind, retrieve our empathy, and build connections with more-than-human beings.

Art Practice in the Gaia

While encountering beings of living or non-living, sentient or non-sentient, conscious or nonconscious, we need to turn our vision towards Gaia that helps us understand life on Earth as an integral and regulated entity. But as the feeling of living or extinction is invisible, how can we recognize and speak with Earth Others? Morton proposes that ecological beings are “spectral,” apparition alike, including nonhumans subjected to human metabolism.¹⁸ To contemplate our coexistence with the specters is to see from the shadows of the unseen. A Gaian art practice may shift the drained paradigm to an envisioned one and sense the specters mingling in a broad spectrality.¹⁹ The anthropologist Anna Tsing sees the transformative potential of art, stating that art goes beyond scientific objectivity to engage with the interconnections and intra-actions between things. The sensations embedded in artistic practice spawn the shimmering between the past and the future, the shared moment of present, and the intertwined relations among humans and nonhumans.

With her research on cyanobacteria and algae, the artist Yan Shao embraces a Gaian perspective on the interconnectedness among humans, nonhuman organisms, and the Earth through interactive sensory experience. Her multimedia work Algae Chorus makes the photosynthesis process visible and audible: inside twenty-four glass bottles collected from various places, different species and densities of algae show a range of green shades in the water. As people pass by and block the light in front of the work, light sensors on each bottle are triggered separately, generating a series of audio augmenting the sound of algae’s respiration and photosynthesis process in the water. The carbon dioxide level impacted by human presence is measured to tune the synthesizer, collectively forming an ensemble. The saturated and diversified greeness reorients our visions on the gap of real and well-versed nature. Algae Chorus senses the unseen effort of nonhuman life, appreceiving kinship in the natural world and threading us in the biosphere’s symbiotic relationships. 

To quote Morton, we humans are trapped in our “fossilized human thoughts.”²⁰ It still takes time for us to realize the sensuousness, specificity, and creativity of nonhuman beings; but if we cling to the familiar conformities to the mainstream, to humancentrism, we tend to ignore that the Sun and photosynthetic beings are still practicing their caring system. Once we have a glance into Gaia, we might start to reclaim our intimacies with others.

Footnotes

1. Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1. Part III: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value, 1887. ↩︎
2. Bruno Latour, “A Plea for Earthly Sciences,” New Social Connections, 2010, 72–84, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274877_5. ↩︎
3. Ibid; Timothy Morton, Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (London: Verso, 2019), 15. ↩︎
4. Karl Marx, Preface and Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), 298. ↩︎
5. David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Tennessee: Lavergne, 2016), 208. ↩︎
6.  Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and Evolution (New York: Copernicus, 2014), 277. ↩︎
7. Warder Clyde Allee, Alfred Edwards Emerson, and Orlando Park, Principles of Animal Ecology (Philadelphia etc.: Saunders, 1974). ↩︎
8. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 28. ↩︎
9. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What Is Life? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 200. ↩︎
10. W.I.Vernadsky, “The Biosphere And The Noösphere,” American Scientist 33, no.1 (1945). ↩︎
11. Ibid. ↩︎
12. American Society For Microbiology, “The Great Oxidation Event: How Cyanobacteria Changed Life”, February 18, 2022, https://asm.org/articles/2022/february/the-great-oxidation-event-how-cyanobacteria-change ↩︎
13. Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1. Part III: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value, 1887. ↩︎
14. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What Is Life? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 194. ↩︎
15. Noelle Eckley Selin, Clarence Lehman, “Biofuel”, February 04, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/technology/biofuel ↩︎
16. W. I. Vernadsky, “The Biosphere And The Noösphere.”, American Scientist, Vol.33, No.1 (1945) ↩︎
17. James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). ↩︎
18. Morton, Humankind, 13-15. ↩︎
19. Ibid. ↩︎
20. Ibid, 13-15. ↩︎