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Karl Marx is most widely known for his critique of capitalism and proposal for an alternative economic system, but his theories also offer valuable environmental responses to modern problems. The limits to the Earth’s resources and our afflictions on it are becoming more apparent. Inequality is increasing. No wonder many of us are looking for a viable alternative to the unsustainable exploitative present. Marx writes beautifully about humanity’s role in the natural world, and his environmental views can be grafted onto principles of deep ecology. The eco-socialist movement following this tradition, identifies some issues and ideas hopeful for today.
Marx’s ecology recognises that we are part of nature, but influenced by it. We’re organic beings in an inorganic world, in a dialectic and metabolic relationship. Humankind and nature are separate but united and interrelated.
Humans are sensory beings in a web of the living and not living. Marx was influenced by the enclosure of forests restricting public access to free firewood for cooking and heating; by air pollution in cities too foul to breathe; and by sewage and wastes flowing into the Thames and the sea that should be returned to the soil where it was produced. He saw that urbanisation, industrialisation and alienation of people from the land and the products of their labour, created a ‘metabolic rift’. Natural processes became disrupted, and peoples’ place in them. He recognised that soil depletion through the exportation of nutrients and goodness in produce to far away markets led to dependency on artificial fertilisers just to maintain production.
The environmental and subsequent social problems identified by Marx in the 1800s are further evident today. Rivers, lakes and oceans are polluted by excess nutrient loading while masses of fertiliser is imported from further afield, damaging ecosystems in both locations.
People are alienated from the nature they should feel part of because so much of it is modified or inaccessible through various forms of enclosure. Working lives consign people to cities so they lose connection with the land. ‘All creatures are made into property’. Destruction has extended to global commons like the oceans and atmosphere through the externalised effects of production, consumption and waste.
Eco-socialism is a radical proposition that supports ‘system change, not climate change’. But it takes the logical view that you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. Given the extinction of half Earth’s species in the last 40 years, most of the old forests and wetlands are lost, and 95 per cent of the world is still poor, it’s clear something’s got to change. Eco-socialists argue for a transition to a fairer, more modest and sustainable world. They say it’s both possible and imperative, using green energy technology and connected, public transport-friendly cities to avert the eco-apocalypse now. But they also argue for equality of rights of workers and citizens along the way. They don’t sound like radical requests at all.
