Ecology According to Gorz

Abstract

The theoretical work of André Gorz has a narrower focus than does that of Bookchin. Its object is contemporary social relations in advanced industrial social formations and in particular capitalist social formations. In theorising his object Gorz appeals to Marx but the socio-ecological theory he arrives at has more in common with Bookchin than with any tenable reading of Marx. The key to this paradox is the implicit premise of Gorz’s general social theory which is one and the same with that of Bookchin, namely an anthropology of self-sufficiency. It is this premise which clouds Gorz’s reading of Marx and yields a theory of revolution as one of individual self-management which converges with Bookchin’s theory of revolution as self-activity.