John Bellamy Foster has been a leading figure in ecological Marxism for a quarter of a century. In those years he has helped reevaluate Marx's approach to nature - fostering the idea of enviornmental crisis being the inevitable consequence of a capitalist system based on capital accumulation. In his latest book Foster makes the case that dialectical thinking is a crucial insight that we inheret from thinkers like Marx and Engels, precisely because it explains why a technocratic approach is incorrect. Indeed, why such simple answers have failed to even slow the rate of environmental degradation. As he writes in the preface to this new work:
It is the method of materialist dialectics that is Marx and Engels's chief legacy to us today as we confront the twenty-first-century planetary emergency... the theoretical critique of our alienated world takes on practical significance as transformative praxis only by means of the concrete struggles carried out in relation to ever-changing historical conditions.
Foster explains that this is the point of The Dialectics of Ecology, "aimed at the integration of the ecological and political-economic critiques of capitalism with the conditions of the global struggle conceived in the broadest terms."
This reassertion of the importance of dialectics is crucial for Marxists and non-Marxists. As Foster explains Western Marxism greatest failure was to break from an understanding that placed nature's dialectics as a core part of its thinking. As he says, "Historical materialism was then robbed of any connection to nature as a force in itself, reducing the notion of materialism within Western Marxism simply to denaturalised political-economic relations". It is a poison that continues to plague some thinkers. One of the best things about this book, which develops further the theses that Foster wrote about in his Deutscher Prize winning book The Return of Nature, is the notion that Marxism after Marx and Engels was developed and explored by later thinkers. The chapter here on Engels and the Second Foundation of Marxism is an important restatement of this - exploring as it does how various thinkers fought to establish a genuine Marxism far from the promethean Stalinised version we are used to. But, as Foster points out, this is also important because it highlights how Marx and Engels' work was a collaborative and developing set of ideas - countering those, such as Kohei Saito, who argue for a fundamental break between the two thinkers. A genuine dialectics of ecology must recognise this rather than repeat the mistakes of the past.
Restating Marx's contribution to ecological thinking is worthwhile. To summarise Foster. Marx's materialist view of nature was in three parts, the universal metabolism of nature, the social metabolism of nature though human labour and the metabolic rigt that takes place when the social metabolism of nature is shattered by the dominant means of production. It is these insights, combined with Marx's understanding of the dynamic of the capitalist economy that makes his thoughts so important.
It is a far clearer, and more useful dynamic, than that inhabited by too many "post Marxist" and "post Humanist" thinkers, who decouple economics from nature, from humanity and much more, "anything by a conception of material-senuous human beings, production, and practice".
Foster's clarity on these theoretical concepts is refreshing. Much of the book is an exploration of the importance of these core ideas to both a theoretical understanding of the society-nature relationship and to practical questions within ecological thinking. One of these, the capitalisation of nature, so called "Natural Capital" is exposed as the trick it is, further subordinating the natural world to the accumulation of wealth.
That said, I do not agree with all of Foster's conclusions. I find it hard to accept his assertion that China represents "a new, revolutionary, and transformative model of civilisation" or that "in twenty-first century China, ecological Marxism has contributed to the development not only of a powerful critique of contemporary environmental devastation, but aslo to the promotion of ecological civilisation as an answer". In contrast, I think Marxists should see China as being a form of capitalist economic organisation whose accumulation of wealth is driven primarily by the needs of its ruling class to grow, in the context of wider, global, imperialist relations. It is only this that can explain China's repression of internal dissent (including environmental protest) and the state's close work with multinational corporations to faciliate the exploitation of Chinese workers.
This is not to disagree with Foster's point that Chinese philosophy and history have contributed to a greater awareness of ecological ideas in the context of materialist thinking.
But, as Foster has repeatedly made clear, the creation of a revolutionary socialist sustainable future will require a break with past social and economic organisation. A society based on the collective interests and activity of the "associated producers" can only be that if it is based on the maximum amount of democracy and workers' control of production from the bottom of society. Creating such as society remains the key task of Marxists today and requires the building, or rebuilding of revolutionary socialist organisation.
Key to developing an adequate transformative thinking for such organisations will be clarity of Marxist ideas. Once again John Bellamy Foster's book is an important contribution to such a task.
Related Reviews
Foster - Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature
Foster & Clark - The Robbery of Nature
Foster & Burkett - Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique
Foster, Clark & York - Critique of Intelligent Design
Foster - The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet
Foster - The Vulnerable Planet
Foster - Ecology Against Capitalism
Foster - The Return of Nature
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