Phil,
I think the following illustrates fairly clearly that Marx not only did not
have an ecological theory, he specifically rejected the importance of
studying the relationship between humans and the environment for the
purposes of his work:
"It is not the unity of living and active humanity with the natural,
inorganic conditions of their metabolic exchange with nature, and hence
their appropriation of nature, which requires explanation or is the result
of a historic process, but rather the separation between these inorganic
conditions of human existence and this active existence, a separation which
is completely posited only in the relation of wage labour and capital."
(Grundrisse, Vintage 1973, 489).
In particular, throughout this section Marx repeatedly refers to "natural
conditions" as man's "inorganic being" which could hardly speak more clearly
that he did not consider man's relationship to the environment from the
perspective of a living system of which man is a part. Yet this is the
fundamental insight of the science of ecology.
Paul H. Dillon
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