Subjects Archives: Marxist Ecology

The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY takes a look at how Marxists can explore the relation between capitalism, socialism and the environment.

Daniel Tanuro is an agricultural engineer and leading socialist activist who has made numerous contributions to ecosocialist thought and practice, most notably, in his book Green Capitalism: Why It Can’t Work. Yet, this has been coupled with persistent claims that there are “fundamental flaws” in Karl Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism.

The alternative to the social and ecological pathology which is becoming all-pervasive in the socioinstitutional and economic fabric of modern capitalist society is to be found in the development of an appropriate, harmonious relationship between humanity, their productive powers, and nature.

Ecosocialism — in particular the Marxist wing of the ecosocialist movement — builds and acts on that understanding.

CO2 was identified as a prime driver of global warming in the 1950s and has been the subject of many international meetings over the past 30 years. Despite increasing calls to reduce carbon emissions, they continue to rise faster and faster.

In this episode, we speak with Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. At Cornell, about his role in crafting the Green New Deal Resolution, his conception of finance as a franchise, and his experience as an advisor to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well to Senators Sanders and Warren.

An organized working class will be a crucial part of any movement that is capable of winning the kinds of changes we need. Workers not only can demonstrate in large numbers: they also they have the power to shut down sectors of the economy, which provides crucial leverage against a powerful ruling class.

This is an essay in six voices, from long-time activists who participate in the North American ecosocialist network System Change Not Climate Change.

If there is one thing from which Green thinking and practice suffers, it is the lack of an over-arching historical and socioeconomic conceptualisation of the dynamics making for the trashing of the environment as habit for humans and other creatures.

In the latest installment of our “Not One Step Back!” reading series, we take a listener recommendation and look at the introduction to “Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique” by John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett.

Marx’s thought with regard to ecology has been neglected for a long time or has been misunderstood, both within and outside Marxism. Saito shows that Marx’s concern with the relation between humankind and nature is already present at an early stage of his thinking.

That Hurricane Florence broke rainfall records for tropical storms in both North and South Carolina shouldn’t be surprising, as global climate change has increased extreme precipitation in all areas of the continental United States.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and an economic shift in China it seemed that capitalism had become the only game in town. Karl Marx’s ideas could safely be relegated to the dustbin of history. However the global financial crash of 2008 and its aftermath sent many rushing back to the bin.

At the end of January 2018, the rollercoaster ride that is the Trump presidency took another unexpected turn: the leader of the free world claimed that the United States could reenter the 2015 Paris climate agreement—if the U.S. were given a “completely different deal.”

The article uses the Eco Marxist perspective to look at deforestation and the impact it has on Earth in terms of soil erosion, air pollution and the threat it places on plant and animal life.

A conversation with Andreas Malm about the impotence of postmodernism in face of climate change and capital’s role in the destruction of nature.

On every scale, from the smallest cells to the entire planet, the essential elements of life are constantly used and re-used. Biogeochemical cycles are the basis of the biosphere.

While mainstream ecological theory has been dismissive of Karl Marx, serious research in recent decades has recovered some of his very important insights on ecological issues. The most systematic and thorough investigations on Marx’s ecological views are those of John Bellamy Foster and his friends from Monthly Review.

Capitalism has been the subject of too many conflicting definitions for any of the claims that follow to have any purchase on truth — understood as an adequation to the real. Beneath the numerous disagreements, however, a common substratum can be gleaned between the liberal Smithian, and the classical Marxist and Weberian positions: capitalism is a system geared at fostering accumulation for its own sake.

Andreas Malm’s powerful critique of current environmental philosophies puts historical materialism and cutting-edge science at the center of a call for militant action.