Was Marx an Ecosocialist?

By Kamran Nayeri, December 31, 2022

Since the turn of the 21st century, a few authors whose books have been published by Monthly Review Press (hereon, the Monthly Review authors) have provided a new reading of Marx. While initially it was argued that Marx had "ecological insights" (Burkett 1999; Foster 2000), more recently, it has been suggested that Marx was, in fact, an ecologist and ecosocialist (Saito 2017). I have reservations about this approach and this claim.

First, the project of the Monthly Review authors is an exercise in Marxology. Their focus is on how a new reading of Marx's well-known texts and those that have come to light recently may show his relevance or even vital importance for understanding the root causes of the ecological crises, not a discussion of these crises and their root causes using all available knowledge.  

 

Second, Saito's claim (2017) that Marx was an "ecosocialist" is implausible. Why have generations of socialists, including Marx himself and his lifetime collaborator Engels, always considered him a socialist and never described his intellectual contributions in any way implying ecosocialism in the sense we understand it today? Why Engels cited only two intellectual contributions of Marx: historical materialism and the theory of surplus value? Was he less familiar with Marx's intellectual development than Saito and the Monthly Review authors? Why neither Marx nor Engels made much of "metabolic rift?" Could it be that they did not consider it central to Marx's theories, contrary to what Monthly Review authors now argue? 

 

Despite such apparent concerns, Saito claims ecology is foundational to Marx's labor theory of value. This claim does not fit the facts either. Marx's concentrated effort in writing his critique of political economy began with Grundrisse (1857-58) and continued with Contribution to Critique of Political Economy including "Preface" completed in 1859, Theories of Surplus Value in 1861, Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, and Marx himself published Capital volume one in 1867. Engels edited and published Capital Volume 2 in 1885 and Volume 3 in 1894. 

 

However, the term oekologie (ecology) was coined only in 1866 by Darwin's disciple, the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, just a year before the first volume of Capital was published. Foster, Clark, and York (2010, p. 313) certainly should take exception with Saito's claim as they wrote: "[T]here was hardly any mention of the new term [ecology] for a couple of decades [after Haeckel coined the term in 1866]. Not until 1885 did a book appear with it in its title. Hence, ecology as an organized discipline cannot be said to have existed prior to the early twentieth century." How could ecology then be foundational to Marx's "political economy," as Saito asserts? 

 

Moreover, Saito's use of the word "ecology" is murky as he uses it to denote the culture/nature relationship, as in his discussion of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Saito 2017, p. 14). While humans are part of the planet's ecosystems, the culture and nature discussion is distinct from the much broader scope of what is meant by ecology. The Cambridge dictionary defines ecology as "the relationships between the air, land, water, animals, plants, etc., usually of a particular area, or the scientific study of this." However, Saito still claims that the 26-year-old Marx, who had yet to study natural sciences, was already an ecologist.

 

Eager to make a case for Marx as an early ecologist and ecosocialist, Saito conflates "ecology" with "metabolism." However, Encyclopedia Britannica defines metabolism as "the sum of the chemical reactions that take place within each cell of a living organism and that provide energy for vital processes and for synthesizing new organic material." Cleary, ecology, and metabolism are separate fields in biological sciences. Saito may wish to argue that in the mid-nineteenth century, the early discussion of what we now call "ecology" and "metabolism" was in an infantile state and murky, overlapping each other. While that is true, how can Marx, who was not a natural scientist, have a clear idea of either field still in development and make these "foundational" for his "political economy"?

 

Third, it appears that the Month Review authors' interest in Marx and ecology with a focus on the metabolic rift and Saito's reimagination of Marx as an ecologist and ecosocialist are motivated by the much wider interest in metabolism in many fields of study and the intellectual history of metabolism (e.g., Fischer-Kowalski 1998; Bundy et al. 2009; Martinez-Alier 2009; Pauliuk and Müller 2014; Richter et al. 2018). As Fischer-Kowalski states, there were scattered metabolism studies in the second half of nineteenth-century Europe. Still, more recently, "[i]n connection to varying political perspectives, metabolism gradually takes shape as a powerful disciplinary concept." The Monthly Review authors' rereading of Marx represents its extension to ecosocialist literature. That is perhaps why Saito tends to read too much into Marx's interest in metabolic rift due to the influence of the recent emphasis on it in academia. 

 

However, the interest in metabolism and ecology in all cases, including the ecosocialist theorizing, has been on the interaction of humans with their environment (nature) better to control it for the benefit of human society, whether capitalist or socialist. It is a distinctly anthropocentric interest, as I will discuss below. 

 

Fourth, Saito conflates the realms of social and biological sciences when he claims ecology is foundational to Marx's critique of political economy and his labor theory of value. This is an obvious error as value is a social category, and Marx's labor theory of value is about social and class relations under the capitalist mode of production. Ecology and metabolism both belong to biological sciences. Neither Marx's labor value theory nor sciences are about the intrinsic value of nature as such. Conflating them creates a methodological problem I have discussed in my critique of Jason W. Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life (2017; see Nayeri July 16, 2018). 

 

There is a significant difference perhaps lost to Saito. Marx's labor theory of value is by construction is a theory of the capitalist mode of production. The idea that it can be utilized as the foundation for an integrated theory of society ignores this fact. It further ignores that Marx viewed it as a critique of the capitalist mode of production. Still, Saito wants to resurrect it as "Marx's political economy" somehow built on the notion of metabolic rift. For Marx, as for Rosa Luxemburg and Ernesto Che Guevara, the transition to socialism requires the withering away of the law of value and its replacement with mass socialist consciousness and economic planning (Nayeri 2005). In this, Saito joins the market socialists who confuse Marx's critique of political economy by considering it as his political economy and want to use it in the service of socialism or ecosocialism. 

 

Fifth, although the "metabolic rift" notion is central to Monthly Review authors' new reading of Marx, it adds no new explanatory power to the socialist and ecosocialist discussion of ecological crisis. Michael Friedman, a biologist, writing in Monthly Review edited by John Bellamy Foster, summarizes it as follows: 

 

"Foster attributes the metabolic rift to the intrinsic dynamic of capitalist production with its private ownership of the means of production, drive for profits, ever-expanding markets, and continuous growth. Marx employed this idea to describe the effects of capitalist agriculture on the degradation of soil fertility. Foster and his co-thinkers have employed the concept in analyses of climate change, biodiversity, agriculture, fisheries, and many other aspects of human interaction with our biosphere."" (Friedman 2018, my emphasis). 

 

Saito (2017, p. 20) makes the same argument: 

 

"Marx's political economy allows us to understand the ecological crisis as contradiction of capitalism because it describes the immanent dynamics of the capitalist system, according to which unbound drive of capital for valorization erodes its own material conditions and eventually confronts it with the limits of nature." 

 

However, almost half a century ago, Ernest Mandel (1977) offered the same argument without having the benefit of rediscovering Marx's "metabolic rift." In other words, Monthly Review authors use the term "metabolic rift" instead of what ecologists, socialists, other ecosocialists, and the public have called ecological problems or crises. 

 

Sixth, Saito's argument that the capitalist accumulation and valorization process will run against natural limits (Saito 2017, p. 20) was implicit in earlier socialist writings on the ecological crises well before the current discussion of metabolic rift. Even the politically mainstream Club of Rome, in its highly influential Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al. 1972), concluded that unlimited growth on a finite planet is impossible, causing ecological crises. Thus, the notion of "metabolic rift," while useful for understanding an aspect of the intellectual development of Karl Marx, is not necessary to conclude natural limits to growth, capitalist or socialist. As O'Connor (1998, p. 159) writes: "In 1944, Karl Polanyi published his masterpiece, The Great Transformation, which discussed the ways in which the growth of the capitalist market and economic relations generally impaired or destroyed their own social and environmental conditions." 

 

Seventh, the polemical nature of some Monthly Review authors tends to undermine their scholarly value. Saito, for instance, frames his book as a critique of those who find Promethean or productivist streaks in Marx. He does not thoroughly refute the critique and ignores the fact that socialist currents all over the world have long favored economic development and industrialization. Still, he does admit that the young Marx harbored Promethean views.[i] (Saito 2017, 13) However, in my view, the problem of Prometheanism or productivism in Marx, in socialist and ecosocialist theory, is real. Using Marx's analysis in Capital Volume 1 and a fully developed argument in a section in Grundrisse, I wrote an essay to show how the rise of the so-called gig economy is anticipated by Marx's theory (Nayeri, June 2018). I coincidentally documented how Marx viewed ever more division of labor based on technical change, which fuels economic growth and hence material abundance as necessary for developing his vision of socialism. Others who have studied this question confirm this finding. Among them is Marxologist Paresh Chattopadhyay (2000), who we recently lost, who insisted that understanding Marx required reading him in the original language. Of course, some have argued that Marx's vision of socialism is consistent with sustainable human development (Burkett 2005). Nevertheless, Saito (2017, p. 11) ignores such tensions in Marx. Of course, an intellectual giant like Marx, who continued learning and relearning, thinking and rethinking throughout his life, must have tensions and shifting views in his massive writings, much of which Marx did not polish or perhaps even did intend for publication. Those who, like Saito, attempt to provide a "systematic and complete reconstruction of Marx's ecological critique of capitalism" (ibid. p. 12) tend to ignore or paper over such tensions. 

 

Eight, the contributions of Monthly Review authors are ultimately based on Marx's labor theory of value. However, following a key revision of Marx's theory that began with Hilferding's Finance Capital (1910), Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy (1966, pp. 5-6) argued that capitalist competition has long given way to monopoly capitalism. As was shown in the late 1960s and 1970s, the monopoly capital theorists from Hilferding to Baran and Sweezy misunderstood Marx's theory of competition as being the same as the neoclassical notion of Perfect Competition based on an idealized view of the capitalist market (Nayeri, 2018, August 19, 2018). How will this impact the "systematic and complete reconstruction of Marx's ecological critique of capitalism?" 

 

Finally, any "reconstruction of Marx's theory" is of necessity more a theoretical development of its author(s) than "what Marx really said." Is this clear from a century and a half of debate on various aspects of Marx's theoretical contributions? Aren't there multiple interpretations of historical materialism, labor theory of value, theory of the proletariat, and of socialism, to name a few of the most important? There are even many more interpretations of "Marxism," a label that, according to Engels, Marx opposed. The responsibility for turning Marx's contributions into a doctrine and opening the door to a cult of Marx belongs to Karl Kaustky. I do not share his view and have not used this label since about 2000.  

[i] Daniel Taruno, whom Saito cites as a critic of Marx's Promethean views, has written a constructive response to Saito that includes the following: "It seems to me preferable to consider 'Marx's ecology' as an unfinished project. The practical question, therefore, is: 'what should we, as ecosocialists, do to continue the work?'" (Taruno, 2020) 

References:

Nayeri, Kamran. "On Jason W. Moore's 'Capitalism in the Web of Life," July 18, 2017.