Materialist Ecology has a great protagonist in John Bellamy Foster
JBF has a new book, Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique, in which he defends 2nd generation eco-socialists from the persistent attacks and mis-conceptions of 1st generation eco-socialists.
The summary of Marxist Ecology and its insights are excellently outlined in the following interview
INTERVIEW: JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER Marx and the Earth: Why we wrote an ‘anti-critique’
You write that there is a “complex materialist ecology at the root of classical Marxism.” What are the basic and most important insights of Marx and Engels regarding the destruction of nature in capitalism?
JBF: This is difficult to answer. The principal discoveries have to do with Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, his ecological-value analysis, the analysis of ecological imperialism, and Marx and Engels’s development of the dialectics of ecology. Most important from the standpoint of praxis is Marx’s extraordinarily radical definition of sustainability, in which he said no one owns the earth, rather people must maintain it for future generations as good heads of the household. Socialism, for Marx, was defined in Capital, vol. 3 in terms of the rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolism between human beings and nature, along with the full development of human potential. Marx adopted the concept of metabolism from the natural science of his day, thereby developing an ecological systems analysis that anticipated today’s systems ecology. Marx’s metabolism argument took the form of a dialectical mediation between the labor and production process looked at from an ecological standpoint, and natural processes as a whole. Capitalism’s alienated “social metabolism” manifested itself as an “irreparable rift” in the human relation to nature through production under capitalism. Marx’s ecological value-form theory argued that value production under capitalism undermined the natural-material/use value components of wealth, generating contradictions not only in relation to labor, but also in relation to nature. Marx’s overall ecological-value analysis reveals the contradictions inherent in this, embedded in capitalism’s treatment of nature as “a free gift for capital.”
Looks very good.
The argument by JBF that post-WW2 Western Marxism largely excluded natural science, which is where ecological thinking first developed, makes for fascinating reading.
If you abandon materialism anywhere, it will come back and bite you on the ass somewhere else. "But Marxism when it revived in the West in the 1960s was distinguished from classical Marxian thought in that it largely excluded natural science and with it nature itself from the Marxian tradition."
Western Marxism "screwed up". The rest makes for interesting reading as well.
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Western Marxism? Isn't that more than a bit of a generalisation? Still, I'll look for the book; I'm sure I can find it in a library here.
Yes, a generalization but in the main pretty fair. The sterile text-booky version that survived out of the former SU never lost that insistence of a connection to natural science. Plenty of those anti-Stalinist scientists - N. Vaviliov and others - were Natural Scientists. Western Marxism definitely distanced itself from the "un-cool" Soviet version partly by distancing itself from the dull, plodding Natural Science approach and emphasizing the cool, [incipient post-modern?] Social Scientific approach. I have to admit I got sold on the marketing myself.
By the way, JBF has another book on the History of Science which underlines the essential role of what he calls materialist philosophy (used in the old Marxist sense) in the development of Science generally. It's not long but it's good. See Critique of Intelligent Design.
Some of us actually became Marxists through natural science. Not by an egregious example of capitalist exploitation that evoked our outrage, not by study and activism around internationalism and solidarity, not by going on strike. We all have our paths ... to try and reach those luminous summits. Cheers.