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Was Marx a climate warrior?

Originally published: Marcel Stoetzler Youtube Channel on May 27, 2021 (more by Marcel Stoetzler Youtube Channel) (Posted Jun 01, 2021)

This is a talk given online at the ESRC Festival of Social Science on November 11, 2020: ‘Was Marx a climate warrior?’ for a panel organized by Bangor University. (It is in fact a pre-recorded version of the talk, while the actual talk on the day was given live but apparently not recorded. Same slides, slightly different improvised talk.) I try (in ridiculously compressed form) to explain Marx’s concept of the ‘metabolic rift’ as well as the general Marxian explanation of what makes capitalism so uniquely dynamic and ever expanding, which is what underlies the current climate/general environmental crisis (and of course implies also that capitalism can only ‘solve’ the climate issue by abolishing itself, or let’s say, by being abolished by its constituent subjects, ‘us’…).

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