MARX&apos;S ECOLOGY IN THE 21st CENTURY

Clark, Brett M.; Foster, John Bellamy

doi:10.2307/41931871

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World Review of Political Economy

Volume 1, Issue 1

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MARX'S ECOLOGY IN THE 21st CENTURY

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Author(s): Brett Clark , John Bellamy Foster

Publication date (Print): 1 April 2010

Journal: World Review of Political Economy

Publisher: Pluto Journals

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Abstract

The most pressing problem confronting humanity in the 21st century is the ecological crisis. The "problem of nature" is really a problem of capital, as natural cycles are turned into broken linear processes geared to private accumulation. Important advances in ecosocialist theory illuminate the continuing importance of Marx's materialist and metabolic approach for studying the dialectical interchange between humans and nature and the creation of ecological rifts within ecosystems. Additionally, Marx's ecology serves as a foundation for understanding environmental degradation, given his critique of capital as a whole and his focus on the contradiction between use value and exchange value (which facilitates the expansion of private riches at the expense of public wealth, i.e., the Lauderdale Paradox). In stark contrast to the market mechanisms proposed to address the ecological crisis, which place profit above protecting nature, Marx's ecology stresses the necessity of establishing a social order that sustains the conditions of life for future generations.

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Journal ID (jstor): worlrevipoliecon

Journal ID (doi): 10.2307/j50005553

Title: World Review of Political Economy

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN (Print): 2042891X

Publication date (Print): 1 April 2010

Volume: 1

Issue: 1

Pages: 142-156

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DOI: 10.2307/41931871

SO-VID: d3bfdef7-930b-40c6-ad7b-07833644bdb9

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Political economics

Notes

Maarten de Kadt and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, "Failed Promise," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 12 (2001): 50-54.
Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature (New York: Zed Books, 2002), pp. 210-211 Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999) and Marxism and Ecological Economics (Boston: Brill, 2006).
John Bellamy Foster, "Review of Environmental Politics," Historical Materialism 8 (2001): 461-477; Paul Burkett, "Two Stages of Ecosocialism?," International Journal of Political Economy 35, 3 (2006): 23-45.
John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).
Brett Clark and Richard York, "Dialectical Materialism and Nature," Organization & Environment 18 (2005): 318-337; Richard York and Philip Mancus, "Critical Human Ecology," Sociological Theory 27 (2009): 122-149; John Bellamy Foster, "The Dialectics of Nature and Marxist Ecology," in Berteli Oilman and Tony Smith, eds., Dialectics for the New Century (New York: Palgrave, 2009).
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, excerpt from The German Ideology, in Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1967), p. 408
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1976), pp. 286-287, 637-638.
Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), p. 34.
Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 283.
Foster, Marx's Ecology, p. 158; Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, "Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx's Critique of Political Economy," Theory and Society 35 (2006): 109-156.
Paul Sweezy, "Capitalism and the Environment," Monthly Review 41,2 (1989): 1-10.
John Bellamy Foster, "The Treadmill of Accumulation," Organization & Environment 18, 1 (2005): 14.
Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth A. Gould, Environment and Society (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994); Richard York, Brett Clark, and John Bellamy Foster, "Capitalism in Wonderland," Monthly Review 61, 1 (2009): 1-18.
Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 637.
Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster, "Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 50 (2009): 311-334; Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Colonialism (New York: International Publishers, 1972).
Brett Clark and Richard York, "Rifts and Shifts," Monthly Review 60, 6 (2008): 13-24.
Brett Clark and Richard York, "Carbon Metabolism," Theory and Society 34, 4 (2005): 391-428; Herman Daly, Steady-State Economics (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977).
Rebecca Clausen and Brett Clark, "The Metabolic Rift and Marine Ecology," Organization & Environment 18, 4 (2005): 422-444; Philip Mancus, "Nitrogen Fertilizer Dependency and Its Contradictions," Rural Sociology 272, 2 (2007): 269-288. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, "Liebig, Marx, and the Depletion of Soil Fertility: Relevance for Today's Agriculture," in Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, and Frederick H. Buttel, eds., Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), pp. 23-41.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 409-410.
John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), pp. 50-53.
John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, "The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction," Monthly Review 61,6(2009): 1-18.
Luiz C. Barbosa, "Theories in Environmental Sociology," in Kenneth A. Gould and Tammy Lewis, eds., Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 28.
Jean-Paul Deléage, "Eco-Marxist Critique of Political Economy," in Martin O'Connor, ed., Is Capitalism Sustainable? (New York: Guilford, 1994), p. 48.
Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, pp. 211, 221.
Thomas Malthus, Pamphlets (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970), p. 185.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 34, pp. 151-159.
Campbell McConnell, Economics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1987), pp. 20, 672; Nick Hanley, Jason F. Shogren, and Ben White, Introduction to Environmental Economics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 135. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1920).
Robert Brown, The Nature of Social Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 63-64.
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 3; Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 134.
Burkett, Marx and Nature, p. 99.
James Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth and into the Means and Causes of its Increase (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1819), pp. 37-59.
Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1964), pp. 35-36.
Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 48-49; Burkett, Marx and Nature, p. 94.
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 911, 959.
Karl Marx, Early Writings (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 239; Thomas Müntzer, Collected Workers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 335. Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (New York: International Publishers, 1926), p. 68
Paul Burkett, "Marx's Vision of Sustainable Human Development," Monthly Review 57, 5 (2005): 34-62. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 911.
Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Sixth Extinction," The New Yorker, May 25, 2009; Eli Kintisch, "Projections of Climate Change Go from Bad to Worse," Science 323 (2009): 1546-1547; John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, "The Midas Effect: A Critique of Climate Change Economics," Development and Change 40, 6 (2009): 1085-1097.
Peter Rosset, "Fixing Our Global Food System," Monthly Review 61,1 (July-August 2009).
David A. Vaccari, "Phosphorus: A Looming Crisis," Scientific American (June 2009): 54-59.
Peter H. May and Ronaldo Seroa da Motta, Pricing the Planet (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1999).
Robert Solow, "Is the End of the World at Hand?," in Andrew Weintraub, Eli Schwartz, and J. Richard Aronson, eds., The Economic Growth Controversy (White Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1973), pp. 39-61; Burkett, Marx and Nature, pp. 97-98.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 46, p. 411.
Herman Daly, "The Return of Lauderdale's Paradox," Ecological Economics 25 (1988): 21-23 Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp. 147-148.
Maude Barlow, Blue Covenant (New York: New Press, 2007).
Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).
Isaac Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 110-114.

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Maarten de Kadt and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, "Failed Promise," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 12 (2001): 50-54.

[2] Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature (New York: Zed Books, 2002), pp. 210-211 Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999) and Marxism and Ecological Economics (Boston: Brill, 2006).

[3] John Bellamy Foster, "Review of Environmental Politics," Historical Materialism 8 (2001): 461-477; Paul Burkett, "Two Stages of Ecosocialism?," International Journal of Political Economy 35, 3 (2006): 23-45.

[4] John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).

[5] Brett Clark and Richard York, "Dialectical Materialism and Nature," Organization & Environment 18 (2005): 318-337; Richard York and Philip Mancus, "Critical Human Ecology," Sociological Theory 27 (2009): 122-149; John Bellamy Foster, "The Dialectics of Nature and Marxist Ecology," in Berteli Oilman and Tony Smith, eds., Dialectics for the New Century (New York: Palgrave, 2009).

[6] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, excerpt from The German Ideology, in Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1967), p. 408

[7] Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1976), pp. 286-287, 637-638.

[8] Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), p. 34.

[9] Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 283.

[10] Foster, Marx's Ecology, p. 158; Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, "Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx's Critique of Political Economy," Theory and Society 35 (2006): 109-156.

[11] Paul Sweezy, "Capitalism and the Environment," Monthly Review 41,2 (1989): 1-10.

[12] John Bellamy Foster, "The Treadmill of Accumulation," Organization & Environment 18, 1 (2005): 14.

[13] Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth A. Gould, Environment and Society (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994); Richard York, Brett Clark, and John Bellamy Foster, "Capitalism in Wonderland," Monthly Review 61, 1 (2009): 1-18.

[14] Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 637.

[15] Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster, "Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 50 (2009): 311-334; Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On Colonialism (New York: International Publishers, 1972).

[16] Brett Clark and Richard York, "Rifts and Shifts," Monthly Review 60, 6 (2008): 13-24.

[17] Brett Clark and Richard York, "Carbon Metabolism," Theory and Society 34, 4 (2005): 391-428; Herman Daly, Steady-State Economics (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977).

[18] Rebecca Clausen and Brett Clark, "The Metabolic Rift and Marine Ecology," Organization & Environment 18, 4 (2005): 422-444; Philip Mancus, "Nitrogen Fertilizer Dependency and Its Contradictions," Rural Sociology 272, 2 (2007): 269-288. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, "Liebig, Marx, and the Depletion of Soil Fertility: Relevance for Today's Agriculture," in Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, and Frederick H. Buttel, eds., Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), pp. 23-41.

[19] Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 409-410.

[20] John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), pp. 50-53.

[21] John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, "The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction," Monthly Review 61,6(2009): 1-18.

[22] Luiz C. Barbosa, "Theories in Environmental Sociology," in Kenneth A. Gould and Tammy Lewis, eds., Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 28.

[23] Jean-Paul Deléage, "Eco-Marxist Critique of Political Economy," in Martin O'Connor, ed., Is Capitalism Sustainable? (New York: Guilford, 1994), p. 48.

[24] Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, pp. 211, 221.

[25] Thomas Malthus, Pamphlets (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970), p. 185.

[26] Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 34, pp. 151-159.

[27] Campbell McConnell, Economics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1987), pp. 20, 672; Nick Hanley, Jason F. Shogren, and Ben White, Introduction to Environmental Economics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 135. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1920).

[28] Robert Brown, The Nature of Social Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 63-64.

[29] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 3; Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 134.

[30] Burkett, Marx and Nature, p. 99.

[31] James Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth and into the Means and Causes of its Increase (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1819), pp. 37-59.

[32] Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1964), pp. 35-36.

[33] Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 48-49; Burkett, Marx and Nature, p. 94.

[34] Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 911, 959.

[35] Karl Marx, Early Writings (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 239; Thomas Müntzer, Collected Workers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 335. Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (New York: International Publishers, 1926), p. 68

[36] Paul Burkett, "Marx's Vision of Sustainable Human Development," Monthly Review 57, 5 (2005): 34-62. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 911.

[37] Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Sixth Extinction," The New Yorker, May 25, 2009; Eli Kintisch, "Projections of Climate Change Go from Bad to Worse," Science 323 (2009): 1546-1547; John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, "The Midas Effect: A Critique of Climate Change Economics," Development and Change 40, 6 (2009): 1085-1097.

[38] Peter Rosset, "Fixing Our Global Food System," Monthly Review 61,1 (July-August 2009).

[39] David A. Vaccari, "Phosphorus: A Looming Crisis," Scientific American (June 2009): 54-59.

[40] Peter H. May and Ronaldo Seroa da Motta, Pricing the Planet (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1999).

[41] Robert Solow, "Is the End of the World at Hand?," in Andrew Weintraub, Eli Schwartz, and J. Richard Aronson, eds., The Economic Growth Controversy (White Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1973), pp. 39-61; Burkett, Marx and Nature, pp. 97-98.

[42] Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 46, p. 411.

[43] Herman Daly, "The Return of Lauderdale's Paradox," Ecological Economics 25 (1988): 21-23 Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp. 147-148.

[44] Maude Barlow, Blue Covenant (New York: New Press, 2007).

[45] Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).

[46] Isaac Deutscher, The Unfinished Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 110-114.