Was Marx an Ecosocialist?

 By Kamran Nayeri, October 12, 2023

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Museum-Karl-Marx-Haus

Preface: This essay is the expanded version of chapter 22 of my book Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism. 

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Since the turn of the twenty-first 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 is suggested that Marx was in fact an ecologist and ecosocialist (Saito 2017). 

 

I consider their contributions valuable for a better understanding of Marx’s intellectual development and initially supported the focus on Marx’s notion of “metabolic rift.” However, I have considerable reservation about this approach for the following reasons. 

First, the project of the Monthly Review authors is essentially 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. 

 

Second, Saito’s claim (2017) that Marx was an “ecosocialist” is implausible. Why 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 for 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 the notion of “metabolic rift?” Could it be that they did not consider it central to Marx’s theories as the Monthly Review authors now argue? 

Despite such obvious concerns, Saito claims that 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 he saw the publication of Capital Volume 1 in 1867. Engels edited and published Capital Volume 2 in 1885 and Volume 3 in 1894. 

Yet, 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. Sevn years before the publication of Saito’s book (2017), Foster, Clark, and York (2010, p. 313) 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.” Clearly, ecology could not have been the foundation of Marx’s “political economy” as Saito claims. 

 

Moreover, Saito’s use of the word “ecology” is murky as he uses the term to express culture and nature relationship as in his discussion of Marx’s 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.” Nonetheless, Saito claims that the twenty-six-year-old Marx who had not yet undertaken any study of natural sciences as an ecologist.

Eager to make a case for Marx as an early ecologist and ecosocialist, Saito conflates “ecology” with “metabolism.” But 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. 

Third, it appears that the Month Review authors’ interest in Marx and ecology with a focus on metabolic rift and Saito’s interpretation of Marx as an ecologist and ecosocialist are motivated by the much wider interest in the notion of metabolism and the intellectual history of metabolism in many fields (e.g., Fischer-Kowalski 1998; Bundy, et al. 2009; Martinez-Alier 2009; Pauliuk and Müller 2014; Richter, et al. 2018). As Fischer-Kowalski (1998, p. 64) states there were scattered studies of metabolism in the second half of the nineteenth century Europe that recently have gained attention in a number of fiends: “In connection to varying political perspectives, metabolism gradually takes shape as a powerful disciplinary concept.” The Monthly Review authors’ rereading of Marx represents this growing interest in metabolism both figuratively and as the movement of material and energy is an extension of this trend to ecosocialist literature. That is perhaps why Saito tends to over stated the role of ecology and metabolism in Marx’s theorizing. 

 

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”) to better control it for the benefit of human society, whether capitalist or socialist. 

 

Fourth, Saito clearly conflates the realms of social and biological sciences when he claims that ecology is foundational to Marx’s critique of political economy and his labor theory of value. This must be obvious 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. To conflate them creates a methodological problems that I have discussed in my critique of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life (2017; see Chapter 8) and in my critique of E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology (2015)

 

Saito routinely writes about Marx’s “political economy” instead of his labor theory of value as a critique of political economy. There is an important difference perhaps lost to Saito. There have been market socialist currents that have argued that labor theory of value can be used to develop socialism. This view opposes Marx’s own view also shared by Rosa Luxembourg and Ernesto Che Guevara, that transition to socialism requires withering away of the law of value and its replacement with mass socialist consciousness and economic planning (Nayeri 2005). 

Fifth, although the notion of “metabolic rift” 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, Mandel (1977) offered exactly the same argument without having the benefit of the rediscovery of 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 problem or crisis. 

Saito’s argument that capitalist accumulation and valorization process will reach 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, a think tank headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, in its highly influential Limits to Growth report (Meadows, et.al. 1972) reached the conclusion that unlimited growth on a finite planet is not possible, and results in ecological crises. Thus, the notion of “metabolic rift” while useful for understanding an aspect of intellectual development of Karl Marx is not necessary to reach the conclusion of 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.” 

 

Sixth, the polemical nature of some of Monthly Review authors tends to undermine their scholarly value. Saito, for instance, frames his book as a response to the criticism of those who find Promethean or productivist streaks in Marx. He does not discuss or refute their critique directly. He 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 (Saito 2017, p. 13). However, in my view, the problem of Prometheanism or productivism in Marx as well as socialist and ecosocialist theories is real. Using Marx’s analysis in Capital 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, hence material abundance, as necessary for the development of his vision of socialism. Others who have studied this question confirm my incidental finding. Among them is Marxologist Paresh Chattopadhyay (2000), whom we recently lost, who insisted that to understand Marx, he should be read in the original language. Of course, there are also some who have argued that Marx’s vision of socialism is consistent with sustainable human development (Burkett 2005). Yet, 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 even 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. 

 

Seven, 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. Although, I do not know what each one of Monthly Review authors think about monopoly capitalism thesis, Foster (1986) has written a book about it.  As it 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 the idealized view of the capitalist market (Nayeri August 19, 2018). How is this going to impact the “systematic and complete reconstruction of Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism?” 

 

Eight, any “reconstruction of Marx’s theory” is of necessity more a theoretical development of its author(s) than “what Marx really said.” Is this not 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 in one occasion. The responsibility of turning Marx’s contributions into a doctrine and open the door to a cult of Marx belongs to Karl Kaustky.  

Despite the above criticism, I welcome any attempt to develop a unified theory of society and nature. There is no dispute that Marx could not finish his critique of political economy. The fundamental question is how to go about the construction of such unified ecosocialist theory. Saito’s claim that Marx was an ecosocialist continues what the Monthly Review authors have implicitly been arguing for that Marx’s theories are essentially what ecosocialists need.  

However, Monthly Review authors and ecosocialist critics of Marx who find weakness in his writings such as productivism or Prometheanism by-and-large pay no attention to the foundations of Marx’s theory, historical materialism which by design set nature aside to focus on the dynamics of class societies, in particular the capitalist mode of production (Nayeri 2023, especially chapters 18, 19, 21). In other words, historical materialism and its application to analysis of the capitalist mode of production, labor theory of value, are anthropocentric theories by design. In the latter, not only nature is objectified but even women’s work at home including in child bearing and child raising is set aside to focus on exploitation of wage workers at the point of production. It took the recent wave of feminism and its critique of androcentrism, the male centered view of the world, for Marxist theorists to develop the social reproduction theory to incorporate women’s work at home into Marxian theory.  Still, ecosocialist theorists refuse to take on anthropocentrism which gas been a foundation of civilization (class societies) seriously (Nayeri 2023, especially chapters 15, 19). As I have shown (Nayeri 2023, chapter 21) when we take nonhumans as part of our worldview and analysis of capitalist mode of production, Marx’s theory of exploitation becomes incoherent as it becomes clear that surplus value is not merely the result of uppaid labor time but also exploitation of nonhumans. Ecosocialism can only be built on the foundation of a new theory of history in which society is analyzed as deeply embedded in nature. Nineteenth century theories of Marx are not adequate for understanding the problems of the twenty first century be cause they were and could not have been constructed as such. 

In my opinion, there are two key reasons for such long delayed attention to the problem of anthropocentrism. Marxists like the general population are born into an anthropocentric culture where humanity is the center of attention. However, those who identify as Marxists also quite often embrace a cult of Marx. By that I mean the view widely held that by-and-large Marx has provides us with the theoretical foundation for addressing the problem humanity faces. It has barred them to question these theories. However, Marx (1865) himself taught us to question everything. Marx ends his Theses on Feurubach (1845) with what is central to his contribution: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

In the same year, in collaboration with Engels, the drafted the German Ideology which outlines their theory of history and social change. In a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer (March 18, 1852), Marx wrote: “.. And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society .”(emphasis in original) 

Today, more than 170 years later it is clear that what Marx wrote has in part 2 and 3 in the above statement have mot yet been born by history. How do we explain “Marxists” who ignore the importance of this problem and the need to address? Instead, such “Marxists” go on to use their own interpretations of his theories in the hope of changing the world or even worse claim that Marx was even an ecosocialist whose nineteenth century theories are adequate for the problems of twenty first century?

My own approach as a student of Marx is entirely different. I consider Marx as a revolutionary intellectual giant of nineteenth century and his theories bound by the knowledge of his time address for the problems of his time. I have argued Marx’s theory of history and its application to the analysis of the capitalist mode of production set aside nature to focus on the dynamics of classes and are inadequate for the problems we face today especially the ecological crises. In this, I follow earlier thinkers Max Horkheimer and Theodore of Frankfurt School (Jay 1973/1996), Perry Anderson (1983). I also go beyond those who tried to mend historical materialism, in my opinion unsuccessfully (for the case of Moore see, Nayeri (Nayeri 2023, chapter 8), including Ted Benton (1993) and Jason W. Moore (2017).  

Instead Marx’s nineteenth century materialism, I propose an animist materialism built on the basis of what we have learned from anthropology, archeology, biology since the middle of twentieth century which give agency to all being in their interconnection, not just human beings. Only on the basis of such philosophical-scientific materialism it is possible to overcome the methodological problem duality if society and nature. It is also on such basis that ecocentrism as the environmental ethics emerges from the theory of history itself because animistic materialism embrace inherent values of all beings which exists irrespective of human beings. Thus, Ecocentric Socialism is a guide to living as life of love for nature and a better humanity even in womb of the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization while it provides the path to fight for transcending it in the direction of withering away alienation from nature as well as social alienation and to provide for human development.  

 

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Baran, Paul and Paul Sweezy. Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order.1966.

Benton, Ted. Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights & Social Justice. 1993.

Bundy J.G., Davey, M.P., and Viant M. R. «Environmental Metabbolomics: A Critical Review and Future Perspectives.» Metabolics. 5, 3-21, 2009.

Burkett, Paul. Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective. 1999.

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Chattopadhyay, Paresh. “Marx and the Process.” marxism.org. September 2000.

Fischer-Kowalaski. «Society’s Metablism: The INtellectual History of Material Flow Analysis: Part I, 1860-1970.» Journal of Industrial Ecology. 2(1):61-78. 1998.

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