Abstract
The science of capital has failed to integrate ecological processes and cultural values into the general conditions for the expanded reproduction of capital and its transition toward a sustainable mode of production grounded on the conditions of life. The environmental crisis questions the ecological irrationality of economics and the ontological grounds of historical materialism. Building a Marxist theory of production grounded on the potentials and conditions of Nature goes beyond rescuing Marx’s concept of Nature. It calls for a productive rationality that accounts for the incorporation of natural processes and the metabolism of the biosphere in the general conditions of production; an environmental rationality for the socialization of Nature, based upon the principles of eco-technological-cultural productivity, ecological resiliency, territorial rights and environmental justice.
Paper delivered at the XIII Coloquio de Antropología e Historia Regional, organized by El Colegio de Michoacán, August 7–9, 1991. Published originally in Leff, E. (1993). Marxism and the environmental question: From critical theory of production to an environmental rationality for sustainable development, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 4(1), pp. 44–66. This revised text incorporates a synthetic version of an article unpublished in English: Leff, E. (1980). Alfred Schmidt y el fin del humanismo naturalista, Antropología y Marxismo, No. 3 abril–septiembre de, pp. 139–152.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For Feuerbach, “Metaphysics or logic is only real, immanent science, when it is not separated from the so-called subjective spirit […] The reality, the subject of reason is man only. It is the man who thinks, not the Ego or Reason” (cit. in Schmidt 1971, p. 26).
- 2.
“Nature in its broad sense is the sole object of knowledge […] it includes the forms of human society […and] it only appears in thought and reality in virtue of these forms” (Schmidt 1971, p. 29). Schmidt relies on The German Ideology and on the Paris Manuscripts, where Marx stated that “nature, taken abstractly, for itself, rigidly separated from man, is nothing to man,” to affirm that “Just as in Marx’s view there is no purely immanent succession of ideas such as ‘intellectual history’ might investigate, so also pure historically unmodified nature does not exist as an object of natural-scientific knowledge” (ibid., pp. 30, 50).
- 3.
See Chap. 11.
- 4.
Thus, Marx anticipated the structure of Heidegger’s ontological order of Gestell announced in The Question of Technique, of the objectified world disposed for appropriation through calculation, viewed here as the effect of the structure of Capital, of the social relation that transforms Nature into natural objects to be appropriated in theory and in practice by the calculation in value of labor force and the scientific appropriation of natural forces put at the disposal of the production of surplus value (see Chap. 7).
- 5.
Thus, Schmidt stated that: “Nature becomes dialectical by producing man as transforming, consciously acting Subjects confronting nature itself as forces of nature. Man forms the connecting link between the instrument of labour and the object of labour. Nature is the subject-object of labour. Its dialectic consists in this: that men change their nature as they progressively deprive nature of its strangeness and externality, as they mediate nature through themselves, and as they make nature work for their purposes […] the dialectic of the labour-process as a natural process broadens out to become the dialectic of human history in general” (ibid., p. 61). See the critique of dialectical naturalism in Chap. 4.
- 6.
Schmidt considers that “The whole of nature is socially mediated and, inversely society is mediated through nature as a component of total reality. The hidden nature-speculation in Marx characterizes this side of the connection.” Schmidt’s specular identification between Nature and society leads him to state that: “in the direct labour-process, i.e. the metabolism between man and nature, the material side triumphs over the historically determined form; in the process of exchange, which depends on the labour-process, the historically determined form triumphs over the material side” (Schmidt 1971, pp. 79, 92). By subsuming the social forms of appropriation of Nature in the abstract moments of the exchange between matter and value, a false door was opened in the imaginary field of a Marxian ecological anthropology—as the “ecology of the peasant’s mode of production” (Toledo 1980)—that wishes to regard social formations as the articulation of the formal-abstract determinations of economic value with the material conditions drawn from an empirical analysis of material-energy flows in ecosystems enacted by labour processes.
- 7.
Ecological rift expresses the fact that the way that capital operates on Nature is not by appropriation, but instead as expropriation, i.e., appropriation without an equivalent (in Marx’s terms, also without exchange and without reciprocity). On Marx’s distinction between appropriation and expropriation, see John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark (2018), The expropriation of nature, Monthly Review 69(10), pp. 1–27.
- 8.
- 9.
Similarly, Justus von Liebig postulated the natural-material “law of replenishment” (or “law of compensation”) necessary for ecological reproduction, Cf. Justus von Liebig, Letters on Modern Agriculture (London: Walton and Maberly 1859), 254–255, cit. in Foster (2018).
- 10.
Foster considers that “we can hope to restore the essential metabolism through a revolutionary overturning of the capitalist integument and the creation of new, co-evolutionary material reality. This is Marx’s core ecological message […] The future lies with the development of the twenty-first-century socialist/ eco-socialist movement, to be rooted in a diverse, all-inclusive environmental working class. What is needed is the revolutionary reconstitution of the interdependent social metabolism with nature, bringing it under the rational control of human beings” (Foster 2018). However, nowhere did Marx transform this message into the theoretical construction of that co-evolutionary material reality, inscribing the production process in the material immanence of life.
- 11.
Cf. E. Leff, Ecología y Capital, Mexico: UNAM, 1986 [Green Production, 1995]; J. O’Connor (1989). Combined and uneven development and ecological crisis: A theoretical introduction, Race and Class, 30(3), pp. 1–11; J. O’Connor, Natural Causes. Essays on Ecological Marxism, New York: Guilford, 1998.
- 12.
See Chap. 5.
- 13.
Thus, René Passet proposed the notion of “economics under constraints” in Ecological economics (Passet 1979).
- 14.
- 15.
Cf. Leff, Sobre las relaciones sociedad-naturaleza en el Materialismo Histórico, op. cit.; E. Leff, Ambiente y articulación de ciencias, in E. Leff, ed., Los Problemas del Conocimiento y la Perspectiva Ambiental del Desarrollo, México: Siglo XXI Editores, 1986.
- 16.
Thus, in a different strategy than that posed by environmental economics to internalize environmental externalities in a system’s approach, Ignacy Sachs proposed to assimilate—and therefore to nullify the critical otherness of the environment to economic rationality—the environment as a dimension of a planning process: “As policies are available to the [economic] system, the environment gets narrower. The success of such policies will be based upon […] the disappearance of the concept of environment, which will end up being assimilated into the system […] In fact, in the long run, the environment, assimilated as a permanent dimension of planning, is destined to disappear as a concrete field of action” (Sachs 1980).
- 17.
See Chap. 3.
- 18.
In this sense, Carboni was right in asserting that “the challenge of specificity is accepted by all the new social actors […] It is the result of the complex network of policies […] implemented by capital and the state in order to integrate people at the same time as production conditions are changed. On the one hand, this specificity (difference) represents a break with collective and class solidarity. On the other hand, it reveals new micro-networks of social solidarity and a universal network of solidarity based on social citizenship” (C. Carboni, communication to J. O’Connor 1988).
Bibliography
Althusser, L. (1969), For Marx, London, Allen Lane.
———. (1970), “Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’Etat,” La pensée, 151.
Althusser, L., Balibar, E., Establet, R., Macherey, P. & Ranciêre, J. (1965/2016), Reading Capital, translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach, London: Verso.
Bergson, H. (1907/1998), Creative evolution, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.
Boege, E. (2008), El patrimonio biocultural de los pueblos indígenas de México. Hacia la conservación in situ de la biodiversidad y agrobiodiversidad en los territorios indígenas, México: INAH/Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.
———. (2018), “Hacia una antropología ambiental para la apropiación social del patrimonio biocultural de los pueblos indígenas”, in Toledo, V.M. & Alarcón-Cháires, P. (Eds.), Tópicos bioculturales: reflexiones sobre el concepto de bioculturalidad y la defensa del patrimonio biocultural de México, México: UNAM.
Burkett, P. (1999), Marx and nature: a red and green perspective, New York, St. Matyin’s Press.
CEPAUR (1989), “Human scale development”, in Development dialogue, Num. 1, Motala: CEPAUR/Dag Hammarskjold Foundation.
Daly, H. (1991), Steady-state economics, Washington: Island Press.
Echeverría, B. (1998), Valor de uso y utopía, México: Siglo XXI Editores.
Ely, J. (1988), “Lukacs’ construction of nature”, in Capitalism, nature, socialism, No. 1.
Enzensberger, H.M. (1974), “A critique of political ecology”, New left review, 84 (3–31).
Faber, D. (1988), “Dependent Development, Disarticulated Accumulation and Ecological Crisis in Central America,” CNS, 1.
Fossaert, R. (1977), La société, Tome 2, Les structures économiques, Paris, Seuil.
Foster, J.B. (2000), Marx’s ecology: materialism and nature, New York: Monthly Review Press.
———. (2018), “Marx, value and nature”, Monthly review, Vol. 70, No. 3 July-August.
Foucault, M. (1966), Les mots et les choses, París, Gallimard.
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971), The entropy law and the economic process, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Godelier, M. (1969), Rationalité et irrationalité en économie, Paris, Maspero.
———. (1974), Economía, fetichismo y religión en las sociedades primitivas, México, Siglo XXI Editores.
Godelier, M.M. (1984), L’Idéel et le Matériel, Paris, Fayard.
Granou, A. (1973), “Le Capitalisme Face à la ‘Non-Croissance’”, Les temps modernes, 236, 1973.
Habermas, J. (1987), The philosophical discourse of modernity, Translated by Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge: Polity Press/Blackwell Publishers.
Heidegger, M. (1935/1977), “The question concerning technology”, in Heidegger. Basic writings, trans. D. Farrell Krell, New York: HarperCollins, pp. 283–317.
Heller, A. (1976), The theory of need in Marx. London: Allison and Busby.
Leff, E. (1986a), Ecología y capital: hacia una perspectiva ambiental del desarrollo, México: UNAM
———. (1986b), “Eco-technological productivity: a conceptual basis for the integrated management of natural resources”, Social science information, 25 (3): 681–702.
———. (1986c), “Ambiente y articulación de ciencias”, in E. Leff, Los problemas del conocimiento y la perspectiva ambiental del desarrollo, Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores.
———. (1992b), “A second contradiction of capitalism? Notes for the environmental transformation of historical materialism”, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 3 (4):109–116, December, 1992.
———. (1993), “La dimensión cultural del manejo integrado sustentable y sostenido de los recursos naturales”, en Leff E. & J. Carabias (Eds), Cultura y manejo sustentable de los recursos naturales, México: CIIH-UNAM/Miguel Angel Porrua.
———. (1994), Ecología y capital: racionalidad ambiental, democracia participativa y desarrollo sustentable, México: Siglo XXI Editores.
———. (1995), Green production: towards an environmental rationality, New York: Guilford.
———. (2000), “Pensar la complejidad ambiental”, en Leff, E. (Coord.), La complejidad ambiental, Colección “Aprender a aprender”, México: Siglo XXI Editores (2nd revised edition, 2003).
———. (2004), Racionalidad ambiental: la apropiación social de la naturaleza. México: Siglo XXI Editores.
———. (2014), La apuesta por la vida: imaginarios sociales e imaginación sociológica en los territorios del Sur, México: Siglo XXI Editores.
———. (2018), El fuego de la vida: Heidegger ante la cuestión ambiental, Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores.
———. (2019), “Negentropic production”, in Kothari, Ashish, Demaria, F., Acosta, A., Salleh, A. and Escobar, A. Eds., Pluriverse: a postdevelopment lexicon. London: Zed Books.
———. (2020), “Heráclito: A Φύσις e o Desocultamento da Vida”, Desenvolvimento e meio ambiente, 54.
Martínez-Alier, J. (1987), Ecological economics. Energy, environment and society, Oxford/Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
———. (1989), “Ecological economics and eco-socialism,” CNS, 2.
Marx, K. (1965), Œuvres, Économie I, Paris: Gallimard.
Meillassoux, C. (1977a), Terrains et Théories, París, Editions Anthropos.
———. (1977b), Mujeres, graneros y capitales, México: Siglo XXI Editores.
Morin, E. (1977), La méthode. La nature de la nature, Paris, Editions du Seuil.
———. (1980), La méthode. La vie de la vie, Paris, Editions du Seuil.
O’Connor, J. (1988), “Capitalism, nature, socialism: a theoretical introduction”, Capitalism, nature, socialism, 1 (1): 11–38.
———. (1989), “Combined and uneven development and ecological crisis: a theoretical introduction,” Race and class, 30, 3, 1989.
Passet, R. (1979), L’économique et le vivant, Paris: Payot.
Rappaport, R.A. (1971), “The flow of energy in an agricultural society”, Scientific American, 224 (3):116–132.
Sachs, I. (1980), Ecodesarrollo: desarrollo sin destrucción, México: El Colegio de México.
Schmidt, A. (1971), The concept of nature in Marx, London: New Left Books.
Schmidt-Bleek, F. (2008), “Future. Beyond climate change”, Position paper 08/01, Factor 10 Institute, Provence, France.
Schumpeter, J. (2014/1942), Capitalism, socialism and democracy (2nd ed.) Floyd, Virginia: Impact Books.
Toledo, V.M. (1980), “Ecología del modo campesino de producción”, Antropología y marxismo No. 3, pp. 35–55.
WCED (1987), Our common future, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weiszsäcker, E.U. von, Lovins, A.B. & L.H. Lovins (1997), Factor four. Doubling wealth halving resource use, a report to the Club of Rome, London: Earthscan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Leff, E. (2021). Marxism and the Environmental Question: Towards an Environmental Rationality for Sustainability. In: Political Ecology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63325-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63325-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-63324-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-63325-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)