Phil,
It's going to take some time to go through your list of quotes but a quick
once over did convince me even more that when marx talked about man's
relationship to nature he did so primarily in consideration of man's
conversion of nature into an object of labor and its effect on humans
themselves.
My dictionary's definitions of ecology is:
1. a branch of the science concerned with the interelationship of a
species and its environment;
2. the totality or pattern of relationships between a species and its
environment
The discussion of the pattern of relationships between the human species
and its environment is absent from everything you quoted, in fact the
concept of "environment" is absent, rather we have "Nature" which I hope you
don't equate with the term environment as understood by the science of
ecology which developed after Marx did his work and which he did not ever
consider. Allthough I agree that Marxist theory is not incompatible with
the modern science of ecology, I think that the fundamental premise that all
value proceeds from labor represents one of the major places where the
failure to understand man's existence within a web of life emerges in
particular clarity.
Marx considered Nature only insofar as it was involved with human productive
activity (just like all of the other economists), although he (of course)
reecognized that the human species is part of nature. for example, from
"The German Ideology":
"The field (the water, etc.) can be regarded as a natural instrument of
production."
He simply never theorized that relationship to Nature as anything other than
a labor process and nothing you quoted illustrates the contrary. Nowhere
does he say that the field, the water, etc. can be considered living systems
in and of themselves. It doesn't do the theory any good at all to claim
for it qualities it doesn't possess, even if you claim to be a champion of
that theory.
What's the matter Phil? Bad hair day?
Paul H. Dillon
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