Ecological Marxism

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by Zhihe Wang, Huili He and Meijun Fan:

"The term “ecological Marxism” was first coined by Ben Agger in his 1979 book, Western Marxism: An Introduction, Classical and Contemporary Sources. Although there is no unifying definition of ecological Marxism, most of those identified by this term share a critical stance toward industrial capitalism and believe that “the antagonistic relationship between capitalist accumulation and growth and the environment will expose the crisis tendencies within capitalism—i.e., environmental degradation means that the resources for capitalism will disappear and the system will collapse. Nature cannot be treated as a commodity.”30

Ecological Marxism has undergone four main theoretical stages or forms:

  • William Leiss and Ben Agger’s theory of ecological crisis;
  • James O’Connor’s Dual-Crisis Theory; Joel Kovel’s eco-socialism; and
  • John Bellamy Foster and
  • Paul Burkett’s ecological Marxism, which is regarded as “the newest theoretical form” of ecological Marxism in the West."

(https://monthlyreview.org/2014/11/01/the-ecological-civilization-debate-in-china/)

Discussion

The role of James O’Connor

Giovanna Ricoveri et al.:

“The ecological crisis, in both capitalist and state socialist countries but for different reasons (Gare 1993), laid bare the inadequacy of Marxist approaches that insist on the development of the material forces of production (i.e. fossil fuel based industrialisation) as a prerequisite of achieving socialism. In fact, the development of forces of production predicated on a narrow understanding of technological progress has brought about the ecological crisis by means of sustained destructive impacts on the environment. By doing so, productive forces and conditions of production are themselves undermined. It was in an overall context of an increasingly discredited institutionalised Marxist orthodoxy in state socialist countries that, by the 1980s, O’Connor’s attention turned to the ecological crisis and its social causes. His materialist dialectical approach continued through forays into environmental issues and his efforts to rectify what he saw as the absence of systematic Marxist accounts of the ecological crisis. This was and is a collective effort that began with those who participated in the fateful 1988 seminar at University of California Santa Cruz that also gave rise to the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism (O’Connor 1988a). This germinal intellectual turning point oversaw the confluence of left-leaning ecological thought with a diversity of leftist anti-capitalist approaches, including variants of Marxism and feminism as well as early works by the likes of no less than Marxist environmental sociologist John Bellamy Foster, current Editor of Monthly Review (e.g. Foster 1992, 1996). The creative and illuminating outcomes of this confluence and, to a large extent, interweaving of disparate currents are among the lasting legacies bequeathed to us (Kovel 2005; Salleh 1997; Turner and Brownhill 2006).

It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that James O’Connor was among the first in the English-speaking North American and European worlds to develop a Marxist theory of the ecological crisis. This search for a new approach is in keeping with a long Marxist tradition (excepting state socialist apparatuses), traceable to Marx and Engels themselves, of renovating theory in relation to concrete changes in society. O’Connor saw many different sets of relations drawn into the destructive vortex of capitalism. Hence, in keeping with Marx’s method, O’Connor deemed the processes whereby the conditions of production are undermined to be dialectical at multiple levels, including consciousness. The ecological crisis, as a transformation of nature, implies social transformation, such as the rise of environmental movements and the very recognition that classical Marxist conceptions are inadequate (O’Connor 1988a, 3–4). In this, he was long preceded by Marxist feminists and he never went far enough to encompass social reproduction processes fully in his empirical work. He instead did so in the course of his theoretical development. He was concerned about the dialectical reproduction of ecological processes (including natural resources), human beings and their self-realisation potential, social interconnectedness, and cultural processes.

Despite the label, ecological Marxism (just like ecofeminism or ecosocialism) is actually not about explaining or investigating ecosystems per se. Ecology did not emerge from Marx’s theories (which at most sought to explain why capitalist relations are both socially and environmentally destructive), nor have the overwhelming majority of ecologists ever draw from Marx (or Engels) to develop methods or theories. The ecology in ecological Marxism refers to movements and ideas about nature and how we (mainly in capitalist societies) relate to the rest of nature (see Haila and Levins 1992, ix). At least in O’Connor’s original estimation, the matter is about the intertwined contradictions associated with the ecological, personal, and communal conditions that capitalist relations treat as sources and sinks, sources that capitalists pretend are inexhaustible and sinks that capitalists pretend can be polluted or dumped on endlessly. In other words, the drive for the endless accumulation of capital—and the state apparatuses that support that drive—leads to the undermining of the very processes that enable the reproduction of capital. Profits are privatised, while costs are socialised and at the same time offset onto the rest of nature. The regular workings of capital generate conditions within which social reproduction itself can become unsustainable and environmental degradation becomes rife. This is also in full agreement with Marxist and socialist feminists like Nancy Fraser and Silvia Federici, who have long understood that personal conditions of life and communal conditions of production are central to these tendencies of capitalism to undercut the very social and ecological basis of its existence. It is also fully in agreement with ecological Marxists like Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster. Any rift among ecological Marxists is unjustifiable, as it cannot be explained by less or more adherence to Marx’s (and Engels’) original insights about the relationship between capitalist societies and the rest of nature.

To build a Marxian theoretical framework worthy of addressing the ecological crisis, O’Connor drew on Polányi’s understanding of Marx’s concept of conditions of production; that is, the concept of fictitious commodities. As Foster (and others) have pointed out, Polányi had already understood the natural and social impossibility of self-regulating markets.” (https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2018.1495307)

Source: Capitalism Nature Socialism, Volume 30, 2019 - Issue 4, 2019


Example

Ecological Marxism in China

Zhihe Wang et al. :


"First introduced into China in 1986, .. it has “become an important part of contemporary Marxism in China,”32 and interest has grown increasingly in the past twenty years. Important writings by Marxian scholars in the West on ecological Marxism have been translated into Chinese, including Western Marxism: An Introduction by Ben Agger; Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism by James O’Connor; The Domination of Nature by William Leiss; and both Marx’s Ecology and Ecology Against Capitalism by John Bellamy Foster. In addition, nine books and more than 600 articles on ecological Marxism by Chinese authors have also been published.

Ecological Marxism is regarded by some Chinese Marxists as not only “one of the most influential movements in contemporary Western Marxism,” but also “a very important force among various ecological theories.”34 Some Marxist scholars, like He Ping, vice director of the Institute of Western Marxist Philosophy at Wuhan University, even argue that ecological Marxism is “the most creative aspect of American Marxist Philosophy.”

For most Chinese Marxists who believe that the mission of philosophy is, as Karl Marx claimed, to change the world, ecological Marxism “provides a Marxist solution to Capitalist Ecological crisis.”36 The aim of studying ecological Marxism is to “guide China’s ecological civilization construction,” as they recognize that “it is not workable to create an ecological civilization without solid theoretical support.”37 Chinese interest in ecological Marxism is driven by the view that it is one of the major theoretical resources available.

Although ecological Marxism has acquired a good deal of attention in China, it has also been subject to some criticisms. One of the most important is: If capitalism is the cause of the ecological crisis as ecological Marxism claims, why is it more severe in socialist China than in many foreign counties which are capitalist ones?38 Zheng Zhen, a Marxist scholar and professor at the Fujian Provincial Party School, expressed this view at a 2013 conference in Claremont, California, saying: “In the past, we thought environmental pollution and ecological crisis were maladies exclusively associated with capitalism. China as a socialist country would be unlikely to have such problems. However, in the past thirty years of reform and opening-up, China’s resource and ecological problems have grown in proportion to the economic growth, whose level of severity even is no less deplorable than in the primitive accumulation stage of capitalism.”

Thus far, few Chinese Marxists have answered this question convincingly. It is also clear that some Chinese ecological Marxists are using ecological Marxism only to criticize foreign capitalist countries and do not see it as a two-edged sword that also challenges China’s own current development."

(https://monthlyreview.org/2014/11/01/the-ecological-civilization-debate-in-china/)


More Information

Bibliography

  • James O’Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism;
  • William Leiss, The Domination of Nature; and
  • John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology and Ecology Against Capitalism.