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Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature

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In "Marx's Ecology," John Bellamy Foster defies conventional green thinking by raising the banner of materialism rather than spirituality in the fight to save the planet and humanity from ecological ruin. In addition to restoring materialism to its proper place, Foster also shows that ecological questions were central not only to Marx, but other Marxists such as Bebel and Bukharin. By restoring this lost tradition, Foster hopes to create a new basis for ecosocialism grounded in Marxist science rather than mysticism.

Although most students of Marx are aware of materialist thought in such early works as the 1845 "Theses on Feuerbach," Foster argues convincingly that materialism made its debut in Marx's doctoral dissertation on the "Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature," written four years earlier. According to Foster, the standard explanation for the dissertation is that Marx saw Epicurus as a kindred rebel spirit. This Epicurus sought to overthrow the totalizing philosophy of Aristotle, just as the post-Hegelians--including the young Marx--rose up against Hegel. What is missing here is the element of materialism, which drew Marx to Epicurus in the first place. Marx identified with the Enlightenment, for which Epicurus serves as a forerunner to the radical democrats of the 17th and 18th century. The materialism they all shared was crucial to an attack on the status quo, ancient or modern.

The Greek materialists, especially Epicurus, are important to Marx because they represent the first systematic opposition to idealist and essentialist thought. Just as importantly, Epicurus in particular anticipates the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment. His dicta that "Nothing is ever created by divine power out of nothing" and "nature . . . never reduces anything to nothing" are in harmony with what we now know as "the principle of conservation." Foster also notes that Lucretius, another materialist of the classical era, "alluded to air pollution due to mining, to the lessening of harvests through the degradation of soil, and to the disappearance of the forests; as well as arguing that human beings were not radically different from animals."

In their early writings, Marx and Engels wed the materialism of the Enlightenment to a political critique of the capitalist system, particularly targeting ideologues such as Malthus. Taking aim at his false piety, the 1844 "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy" challenges private property, especially in the land, asserting that:

"To make earth an object of huckstering--the earth which is our one and all, the first condition of our existence--was the last step in making oneself an object of huckstering. It was and is to this very day an immortality of self-alienation. And the original appropriation--the monopolization of the earth by a few, the exclusion of the rest from that which is the condition of their life--yields nothing in immorality to the subsequent huckstering of the earth."

By restoring Marx's materialism to its proper place, "Marx's Ecology" provides a theoretical foundation for further explorations in ecosocialism. Once we understand the proper connection between nature and society, we can begin to act to confront the major problems facing humanity, from global warming to diminishing fresh water supplies. In the final chapter, Foster cites a number of Marxist thinkers who belong to the materialist tradition. Their examples can help to inspire a new generation of ecologically minded socialists.

Foster presents an unfamiliar side of Bukharin. His "Philosophical Arabesques," only made available in 1992, reveals a sophisticated dialectical materialist who grounds his analysis of society in ecology. Bukharin writes of the "earth's atmosphere, full of infinitely varied life, from the smallest microorganisms in water, on land and in the air, to human beings. Many people do not imagine the vast richness of these forms, or their direct participation in the physical and chemical processes of nature."

As one of the founders of German Social Democracy, August Bebel not only spoke with some authority in the 1884 "Woman Under Socialism," he also seemed to be anticipating the dire consequences experienced today in the wake of clear-cutting:

"The mad sacrifice of the appreciable deterioration of climate and decline in the fertility of the soil in the provinces of Prussian and Pomerania, in Syria, Italy and France, and Spain. Frequent inundations are the consequence of stripping high ground of trees. The inundations of the Rhine and Vistula are chiefly attributed to the devastation of forest land in Switzerland and Poland."

Finally, in an instance that seems to address Joel Kovel's complaint about the lack of spirituality in Marxism and a possible alternative to Lewis Henry Morgan's obsession with "improvement,", we have the example of Rosa Luxemburg who wrote from prison in May, 1917:

"What am I reading? For the most part, natural science: geography of plants and animals. Only yesterday I read why the warblers are disappearing from Germany. Increasingly systematic forestry, gardening and agriculture are, step by step destroying all natural nesting and breeding places: hollow trees, fallow land, thickets of shrubs, withered leaves on the garden grounds. It pained me so when I read that. Not because of the song they sing for people, but rather it was the picture of the silent, irresistible extinction of these defenseless little creatures which hurt me to the point that I had to cry. It reminded me of a Russian book which I read while still in Zurich, a book by Professor Sieber about the ravage of the redskins in North America. In exactly the same way, step by step, they have been pushed from their land by civilized men and abandoned to perish silently and cruelly."

This book is a hot knife through the rancid butter of existing views of the ties between science, ecology, and the politics of the human future.

Foster presents prodigious historical evidence for his thesis that, despite a century-and-a-half of obtuseness on both right and left, Karl Marx was one of the greatest and deepest inheritors and advancers of the best tradition of both "Enlightenment materialism-humanism" and ecological realism.

Foster shows that, contrary to traditional interpretations, Marx was neither an admirer of crude mechanistic science nor an airy Hegelian dreamer. If one actually bothers to read the earliest and the lesser-known Marx, it turns out that the bearded one was quite consciously an exponent of the supple, open-ended materialism embodied in the Epicurean tradition and in the best ideas of its Enlightenment elaborators, including giants of science like Bacon and Darwin.

This unappreciated fact, Foster also shows, meant that Marx was also a very profound ecologist. Up to speed on the most important ecological debates of his epoch, Marx's whole project, Foster convincingly demonstrates, rested on the kind of hard-headed, historically-sensitive, and politically clear-sighted concern for the world's ecological welfare that is so sorely lacking in today's sterile debates between status-quo ostriches and "radical" nature worshippers.

This book has opened my eyes and greatly deepened my appreciation of Marx, ecological thought, the history and future of science, and the best meaning of humanism. Anybody interested in these vital issues ought to get and digest this ground-breaking tour-de-force!

"Marx's Ecology" by John Bellamy Foster positively reasserts the long-neglected environmental aspects of Karl Marx's writing. Foster guides the reader through a fascinating look at Marx's personal intellectual development and the various thinkers who influenced him. The author reveals a Marx who was keenly aware of capital's strategy to alienate labor from nature. Foster also makes clear that Marx worked assiduously to develop a theory that might reconnect dehumanized labor with its degraded environment in hopes of creating a better, more sustainable world.

Indeed, Foster's book is an interesting study of intellectual history, with an emphasis on the debates that raged during Marx's lifespan in the 19th century. The ideas and discoveries of Darwin, Engels, Epicurus, Hegel, Malthus, Proudhon, and others are discussed at length. Foster presents a Marx who was clearly at the vanguard of progressive thought in his era and gives us considerable insight into how Marx created his materialist theory of history. We also understand why Marx privileged the environment but explicitly rejected the fashionable teleological and racist arguments of his time.

In particular, I found the discussion concerning Epicurus to be fascinating. Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who had a profound influence on the Enlightenment and was the subject of Marx's doctoral dissertation. Foster tells us that Marx's unconventional interpretations have been confirmed by recent archaeological discoveries, although at the time Marx had been working from a small number of extant fragments of Epicurus' writings. In addition to explaining to the reader why Epicurus' ideas are important, Foster deepens our appreciation for Marx, whose intellectual capabilities were evident even at a fairly young age.

In the Epilogue, Foster shows how Marx's ecology fell out of the loop, a victim to Soviet ideology, Stalinist purges and other historical forces. But he shows how snippets of Marx's environmental thought has influenced scholars and activists throughout the 20th century. In fact, Foster suggests that Marx has been vindicated by some within the contemporary environmental movement. For example, Rachel Carson's work connecting corporate power with environmental and social degradation recalls (unconsciously?) Marx's work regarding the dialectic of nature and science. But with this book, Foster has effectively redrawn the circle, solidly connecting Marxist theory with the environment. Foster helps us understand that social justice and ecological sustainability are core Marxist values that can guide and inspire activists who are looking for solutions to today's environmental crisis.

In short, I strongly recommend this book for readers who are interested in intellectual history and/or eco-socialist theory, and congratulate Foster for an outstanding piece of research.

John Bellamy Foster has a justified reputation as a left-wing writer on ecological issues and the intersection between the Red and the Green. In this book he totally vindicates that reputation, because "Marx's Ecology" is an exceedingly well-written, occasionally brilliant book about the ecological thought of Marx and Engels and the philosophical background of the same. Marx and Engels both, it must be noted: Foster correctly rejects the fashionable tendency to leave Engels by the wayside as a mere epigone or someone who warped the True Faith of Marx. On the contrary, as the author shows: Engels was perhaps even the greater ecological thinker of the two, and this book also provides much of a defense and vindication of his much maligned philosophical texts on these topics, including but not limited to "The Dialectics of Nature" and the "Anti-Dühring".

Foster starts out by tracing the importance of Marx's studies of classical philosophy, in particular the Epicurean school, and locates the basis of his entire intellectual project in Epicurus' attempt to unite both the possibilities of freedom and of a consistent causal materialism. Until now, Marx's doctorate thesis on Democritus and Epicurus had often been seen as merely a convenient topic for him to work on, while he was really focused on Hegel - but Foster shows convincingly that in reality the Epicurean strand of thought in Marx is equal at least to the Hegelian, and of course Hegel himself was much influenced by that classical philosophy also.

The writer then in a very accessible manner traces the vagaries of attempts to develop a consistent materialism throughout the history of philosophy, focusing on Bacon, the early mechanistic materialists such as Hobbes, and the Enlightenment materialists like d'Holbach and La Mettrie. Foster shows how Marx and Engels were influenced both by particularly this aspect of Enlightenment thought, but were dissatisfied with the mechanistic aspects of it and its determinism, and wanted to reconcile it with the idea of freedom. This led eventually to the development of the 'dialectical' way of thinking, being-as-becoming, and after Marx and Engels undertook their studies of political economy this was worked out as their historical materialist theory.

Another major part of the book is tracing the influence of ecological and biological thought in their day and preceding it on Marx and Engels. Darwin, of course, is the main figure here, and Foster tells the reader all about the interactions the two had with Darwin and his supporters, about whom they were very enthousiastic. But also the developments in geology, with Lyell and the foundation of non-biblical earth sciences, receive due attention. In so doing, Foster attempts to explain what Marx could have meant when he remarked about the theory of evolution by means of natural selection that it was "the basis in natural history for our view".

This finally leads to a discussion of the fullest development of the thought of Marx and in particular Engels, and the aftermath. Here Foster tries to show that indeed the thought of both was not just thoroughly historical in nature, but also thoroughly embedded in natural history, and that their conception of man's "metabolism" with nature was fundamental to understanding their philosophy of history. He discusses somewhat the different degrees to which later authors have worked along the same lines or failed to perceive it. Interesting in particular is the mentioning of the line of Marxist or Marxist-inspired pathbreakers in biology, from J.B.S. Haldane to the Harvard school of Levins and Lewontin. It is telling that the latter two, in their famous work "The Dialectical Biologist" (The Dialectical Biologist), dedicated it to Friedrich Engels: "who got it right where it counted".

I dare anyone who doesn't profit from this material to pick up this book and tell me the thesis. Throughout the roving chapters of 19th century history and ecological theory is a brilliant thesis, but NOWHERE is it ever clearly stated. Foster uses several hundred pages to raise 400 points, but fails to ever connect them. This book needs an introductory sentence in clear and plain English. Marx's Ecology's main purpose is to make Foster appear "educated" and is used by fellow elites to further assert their intelligence. Why must intellectuals hide their meanings in overly complicated verbose jumbles?

The point of this book is that the environmental debates haven't changed from the 19th century to the present. We're still unable to come to terms with our inability to incorporate an altruistic goal in a capitalist system. Basically, that real environmentalism and real capitalism cannot exist together. It's a powerful assertion and something that needs to be understood, but I would never recommend this book to anyone. Ever. 98% of people who'd pick up this book would not get this meaning from it. It took me several months with 20 classmates to get this far.

Marx's Ecology is a representation of all that is wrong with education. It's more about making him look smart then it is about educating the rest of us. It's such a shame too because this an important debate and the consequences are dire. If I learned anything from this study of 19th century environmentalism, it's that we are no closer to solving these issues. Sadly, Foster's book is of little use.

My group and I used this book for a presentation in our class in Marx and Marxism over at CSUF (go Dr. Avila!) and we would recommend this book to anyone not only interested in Marx and ecology but natural history and the divergent systems of socialism that sprung up in tandem with Marx. Paul Proudhon, Charles Darwin, Malthus, John Evelyn, Francis Bacon, Epicurus and a doven others are the stars of this Altmanesque vehicle, each getting their due. So vast is its scope in terms of not only the social/political/scientific movements but also the personalities that created them and so compact and taut is the prose that this book becomes not just informative but fun and... dare I say it?... rather thrilling to read.

I was reading somewhere that Marx had been refuted, but you never know, the way the Bush gang is acting up it's only a matter of time before the classic challenge of Marx and Engels will see its stock rise as the Ann Coulter traitors realize she meant it. But will the corpus of ideas stand up? It seemed fitting to check out the cultural fire equipment--I appointed myself for the job. This book is a nice and a breezy, well done exploration of the mainline with an interesting twist on ecology. A bit after the fact, perhaps, since the legacy of known historical Marxism in action was not good here. But the relevance of Marx to ecological questions is not a hard rabbit to pull out of a hat. As interesting was the review of the Marxist viewpoint for which one fears there are no second chances in its current form which is lodged in a series of confusions through which the author takes us unwittingly, flawed material presented as 'store items'. Yet the tradition has infinite potential if anyone can extricate the material from its Hegelian, Darwinian confusions, and regrettable fallacies of (economic) theory.
One nice part of the book is the review of Marx's materialism, and the relation to his early studies of Epicurus. Thence the Hegelian sources of Marx and a history of Marx and Engels on Darwin. The problem with Marx's materialism is that it is, despite the obvious enrichment of the Greek source, too nineteenth century, and too obsessed as contra-Hegel. To transcend bourgeois society seems to ask for a philosophy that transcends the whole (bourgeois) philosophic tradition. But didn't Hegel steal on march on that question? To pick materialism against idealism was a strategic limitation. Hegel is too clever to outwit with materialist boilerplate from the age of scientism and water cooler jargon from hallways at Nasa. One is a Marxist anti-Hegelian yet armed with pilferred Hegelian material--the result is seen in the author's discussion of Hegel on Kant, a point on which Marxists tend to toe the line, like pragmatists with their 'naturalized Hegelianism'. Marx was brilliant but Marxism was outwitted by Hegel. Why not backtrack to Kant then, a gesture the author points to without intending it in, surprisingly, Engels whose reputation sits badly with his dialectics of nature, but the book shows thinking much more cogently in private with the Kantian third critique.
The most useful part of the book is the discussion of Marxism and Darwin. But here total confusion has always reigned in the 'over the falls' embrace of Darwin. And I was fascinated to read the author's giving the game away on Marx's obvious reluctance to let selectionist theory pass. For that we must admire Marx's instincts, for he smelt a rat, but the tide turned against him reservations. I think the Darwinist embrace produced by the Seond Internationale was a great failure of Marxism, as the 'critique of evolutionary economy' failed to make it into the tradition, in part because of the agenda on materialism. In a word, our fire equipment is not ready, for this and other reasons. Interesting little book anyway.