Ecology Against Capitalism

John Bellamy Foster

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781583670569
• eBook ISBN: 9781583675083
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In recent years John Bellamy Foster has emerged as a leading theorist of the Marxist perspective on ecology. His seminal book Marx's Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2000) discusses the place of ecological issues within the intellectual history of Marxism and on the philosophical foundations of a Marxist ecology, and has become a major point of reference in ecological debates. This historical and philosophical focus is now supplemented by more directly political engagement in his new book, Ecology against Capitalism. In a broad-ranging treatment of contemporary ecological politics, Foster deals with such issues as pollution, sustainable development, technological responses to environmental crisis, population growth, soil fertility, the preservation of ancient forests, and the "new economy" of the Internet age.
Foster's introduction sets out the unifying themes of these essays enabling the reader to draw from them a consolidated approach to a rapidly-expanding field of debate which is of critical importance in our times.
Within these debates on the politics of ecology, Foster's work develops an important and distinctive perspective. Where many of these debates assume a basic divergence of "red" and "green" issues, and are concerned with the exact terms of a trade-off between them, Foster argues that Marxismproperly understoodalready provides the framework within which ecological questions are best approached. This perspective is advanced here in accessible and concrete form, taking account of the major positions in contemporary ecological debate.

Index

absentee ownership, 86, 100

affluence, 93. See also wealth accumulation

Agrarian Question, The (Kautsky & Lenin), 161–62

Agricultural Chemistry (Liebig), 156, 157

agriculture, 85, 167–68. See also soil fertility

Altvater, Elmar, 35, 37

American Economic Review, 10

American Forest Resource Alliance, 113

amphibian extinctions, 76

Anderson, James, 141, 150, 159–60, 164

Another Turn of the Crank (Berry), 85

Asia, 116. See also specific country

Athanasiou, Tom, 88

AuCoin, Les, 118

Australia, 13, 14

Autobiography (Darwin), 146

automation in forest industry, 121

automobile-industrial complex, 22, 37–38, 89, 98–99, 101

automobiles, energy efficiency of, 95, 97–98, 99

Bahro, Rudolf, 39, 47

Baran, Paul, 98

Bari, Judi, 120

Bart, Jonathan, 112

Bell Curve, The (Murray & Hernstein), 148

Benton, Ted, 137, 152n1

Berry, Wendell, 83, 85

Betrayal of Science and Reason (Ehrlich & Ehrlich), 72

biosphere cultures, 84–85, 89

bird species extinction, 33, 73, 124, 126. See also northern spotted owl

black communities, 63

Blueprint for a Green Economy (Pearce), 79

Bohm, David, 52–53

bond repayment, 11

Bookchin, Murray, 53

bottom line. See economic reductionism

Boulaine, Jean, 158

Boyer, Joseph, 20

Britain, 94, 102. See also England

Budget Rescissions Act (1995), 105–6, 113, 125

Buel, Jesse, 157

Bunker, Stephen, 23

Bureau of Land Management, in, 118, 123

Bush, George, Sr., 65–66, 99, 105, in, 112

and old-growth forest crisis, 122, 123

Bush, George W., 13, 14–15, 16, 19

business ethics, 48

Cairncross, Frances, 57

California, 19, 35, no

Calm Investigation, A (Anderson), 160

Canada: and Kyoto Protocols, 13, 14, 18

timber imports from, 116, 121

capital, natural, 34–37

c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Ecology against Capitalism
• The Ecological Tyranny of the Bottom Line: The Environmental and Social Consequences of Economic Reductionism
• Global Ecology and the Common Good
• Ecology and Human Freedom
• “Let Them Eat Pollution”: Capitalism and the World Environment
• The Scale of Our Ecological Crisis
• Sustainable Development of What?
• Globalization and the Ecological Morality of Place
• Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?
• The Limits of Environmentalism without Class: Lessons from the Ancient Forest Struggle in the Pacific Northwest
• Malthus’s Essay on Population at Age 200
• Liebig, Marx, and the Depletion of Soil Fertility: Relevance for Today’s Agriculture
• Index
• Footnotes