Revisiting Debates on Marxism and Ecology: Towards a New Paradigm in Political Ecology

The Marxian corpus on this question has remained untouched for a long time. It was only after the intervention of John Bellamy Foster in early 2000 that this debate was reinvigorated. In contemporary times this question has been framed in the light of the recent climate crisis.  Certain strands within Marxism due to an adherence to crude forms of economic determinism has somewhat ignored the pertinent question of ecology. This is despite the fact that categories or terms like economics and ecology share a common genealogy and roots.

The perceptive debate initiated by Engels in Dialectics of Nature; in which he sees the existence of nature and society as one metabolic process which exists in continuity. In other words, the processes unfolding in the social setting have a parallel in nature. This guides the course of social and natural evolution which can be explored in the light of contemporary understanding of ecology and society.  According to Marx, “capitalist production…disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil”. It can thus be argued that a certain sort of ecological understanding was inherent in Marx's original frame as is seen in the concept of metabolic rift and social ecology and as highlighted by Marxist naturalists like Richard Lewontin and scholars from Monthly Review School like John Bellamy Foster. Metabolic rift largely propounds the irrevocable damage inflicted on nature and agriculture by industrial capitalist development. According to Foster Marx’s “entire dialectical framework rested on what would today be called an ecological (or socioecological) systems theory, connecting the materialist conception of history to that of nature—and requiring continuing study not only of changing developments in human history, but also in natural history (which in Marx’s work took the form of extensive inquiries into geology, agronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, physiology, mathematics, and more).”

Now, the question that ensues from this discourse is that can this have a bearing on the questions germane to the Indian context like that of ecology and caste or different environmental conceptions and their link with caste and class in the Indian context? Can this Marxist discourse fundamentally deal with the complex question of caste, class and its interplay with ecology?

The articles in this series are an attempt to explore the theoretical debates and their implications on environmental policies. 

 
Modern cities in India such as Delhi are a cesspool of inequalities and disparities that are deeply tied to the class-caste nexus. These aspects manifest themselves starkly on its roads, made apparent by identifying those who utilise its...
Goa and Sikkim, two of the smallest states in India by area, are also places that have some of the richest plant and animal biodiversity, with Goa nestled between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, and Sikkim being a part of the eastern...
Climate change has become one of the most burning concerns of our living times. Using the Marxian concept of ‘metabolic rift’, we illuminate the complex nature-society relationship in India. We do so by understanding the rift advanced by neo-liberal...
The paper strives to explore some fundamental debates concerning the question of ecology, nature and culture in Marxian corpus. First, it attempts to explicate the differences and commonalities between the philosophical conception of nature in...
This paper tried to locate the debate on man-nature relation in the Marxist tradition. It looks at Marx’s theory of alienation and dialectics and argues that his theory of alienation and dialectics is not limited to a critique of capitalist...
With the frantically incessant economic production activity that apparently projects no end, the human-nature relationship seems to have come full circle. As man agonises being manacled by natural constraints, in the form of planetary ecological...
A Marxian orientation towards ecology must support an increase in wages and employment and a fall in profits.  
The Van Gujjars are a nomadic pastoral community who practice seasonal migration and rotational grazing between the forests of Terai Bhabhar and Siwalik regions in winter and alpine meadows (bugyals) in the upper reaches of the Western Himalayas in the summer. However, the inception of fortress...
The discourse on environmental sustainability and political ecology raises several questions on material inequality, poverty, increasing population and disproportionate allocation of resources, but we often overlook the critical question of what we need to sustain and to what extent? The lack of...
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