Marx's Ecology

Materialism and Nature

John Bellamy Foster

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9781583670125
• eBook ISBN: 9781583673805
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Progress requires the conquest of nature. Or does it? This startling new account overturns conventional interpretations of Marx and in the process outlines a more rational approach to the current environmental crisis.It is often assumed Marx cared only about industrial growth and the development of economic forces. John Bellamy Foster examines Marx's neglected writings on capitalist agriculture and soil ecology, philosophical naturalism, and evolutionary theory. He shows that Marx, known as a powerful critic of capitalist society, was also deeply concerned with the changing human relationship to nature. Marx's Ecology covers many other thinkers, including Epicurus, Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Ludwig Feuerbach, P. J. Proudhon, and William Paley. By reconstructing a materialist conception of nature and society, Marx's Ecology challenges the spiritualism prevalent in the modern Green movement, pointing toward a method that offers more lasting and sustainable solutions to the ecological crisis.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Materialist Conception of Nature
• 2 The Really Earthly Question
• 3 Parson Naturalists
• 4 The Materialist Conception of History
• 5 The Metabolism of Nature and Society
• 6 The Basis in Natural History for Our View
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Index