Marx the bourgeois.
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I’m not sure what “bourgeois” Marx really means?
And there is enough evidence in his writings to demonstrate he was an environmentalist.
If you are suggesting that there is an over-emphasis on the traditional class struggle analysis as the motor of social change perhaps that is true.
But that does not mean it is not a class issue…after all, as you say, it is the capitalist class imperative to obey the economic law of capital accumulation. It means ecologists cannot escape the conclusion that only anti-capitalism and a post-capitalist society can solve the environmental emergency.
The reality is that most eco-activists are already adopting anti-capitalist language but have little awareness of what post-capitalism actually is.
That is where we come in…
There are a bunch of reformists calling themselves anti-capitalists and anti-globalists ( or anti-expansionists ) including some members of the capitalists class. There are some reformists saying that Marx was not against the oligarchy, they are just getting lost in semantic, the bourgeoisie and oligarchy are both the same thing. Marx before anything, he was a revolutionary socialist-communists, and he was not a Marxist.
Here’s one example of us refuting the view that JO has repeated yet again:
There’s also this that was referred to the last time this criticism of Marx reared its ugly head here:
Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy
There is also Howard Parson’s book “Marx and Engels on Ecology” (1977) – a classic of sorts and a great source of quotes illustrating their sensitivities to ecological issues
Camus:
“He [Marx] never ceased defending Ricardo, the economist of production in the manner of Manchester, against those who accused him of wanting production for production’s sake (“He was absolutely right!” Marx exclaims) and of wanting it without any consideration for mankind. “That is precisely his merit,” Marx replies, with the same airy indifference as Hegel.”
(My italics. Penguin ed. of The Rebel, Anthony Bower, trans.)
I’m not an expert on economics, Ricardo or Marx, and nor am I Camus scholar.
But i did try to research further
“(Ricardo)…wants production for production’s sake, and this is right…Production for production’s sake means nothing but the development of human productive powers, i.e. the development of the wealth of human nature as a goal in itself”
Or, as Marx puts it in the Grundrisse, “the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour no longer appears as labour, but as the full development of activity itself”…
…The “full development of activity itself”, in the above quote from the Grundrisse, is the “practical” realization of actual infinity. It means that every specific activity is always the “external” expression of a more fundamental general activity, having an expanded version of itself as its own goal, just as Marx says of “production for production’s sake” in his critique of Ricardo. In such a social condition, the immediate productive activity of freely- associated individuals would always be in reality self-(re)production aimed at the multiplication of human powers, including the innovation of new powers. Every activity relates back to the actor. “Actual infinity” in this sense is the practical presence of the general in every specific activity in the here and now. For the Enlightenment, including for spinoffs of the Enlightenment such as Ricardo, an object was merely a thing; for Hegel and above all for Marx, an object is a (self) relationship, mediated by a thing:
“…When the narrow bourgeois form has been peeled away, what is wealth, if not the universality of needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive powers, etc. of individuals, produced in universal exchange? What, if not the full development of human control over the forces of nature–those of his own nature as well as those of so-called “nature”? What, if not the absolute elaboration of his creative dispositions, without any preconditions other than antecedent historical evolution which makes the totality of this evolution–i.e. the evolution of all human powers as such, unmeasured by any previously established yardstick, an end in itself? What is this, if not a situation where man does not produce himself in any determined form, but produces his totality? Where he does not seek to remain something formed by the past, but is in the absolute movement of becoming?”Marx, Hegel, Ricardo: The “Inverted World” In the Heart of the Critique of Political Economy
Can’t say I fully understand but it dos seems a bit more than the simple soundbite of The Rebel
“What, if not the full
development of human control over the forces of
nature–those of his own nature as well as those
of so-called “nature”?”Sounds like a reiteration of the conquest of nature syndrome!
alanjjohnstone wrote: “Can’t say I fully understand…“.
As I’ve said many times before, alan, Marx is a social productionist.
This is nothing at all to do with the bourgeois view of a ‘Nature’ which is ‘out there’, a ‘nature-in-itself’. Any ‘nature’ that we know, is a ‘nature-for-us’, our social product, and we can change it. If we don’t know it, Marx says it is a ‘nothing for us’.
We are our own god.
‘Matter’ isn’t, because we create ‘matter’, a ‘matter-for-us’, a product of our social activity, of our labour.
John Oswald wrote: “Sounds like a reiteration of the conquest of nature syndrome!”
One can only hold to this ideology, if one believes in a ‘Nature’ which is nothing to do with human production, which ‘pre-exists’ our production, which we then proceed to conquer.
It’s a standard ‘green’ ideology, John, but it’s nothing to do with Marx.
That doesn’t mean Marx was correct, of course, but it’s best to be open about one’s ideological choices.
If one holds to ‘Nature’ being ‘conquered’, one can’t hold to Capital.
But many try to do this.
“Sounds like a reiteration of the conquest of nature syndrome!”
Not unless you think that “controlling” “Nature,” i.e natural forces, is the same as “conquering” it. Is harnessing the Sun’s rays to generate electricity “conquering Nature”? Is controlling wind power, tidal power, rivers and waterfalls? Is in fact growing food? Surely not but, if so, how are humans supposed to survive as a natural species? Are they just supposed to sit naked, hungry and without shelter “contemplating” nature as Camus seemed to be foolishly suggesting in your opening post where you quote him as saying:
“they [Christians and Marxists] considered [nature] not as an object for contemplation but for transformation.”
I don’t know if Marx did write of the “conquest” of Nature (though he might have done, in the sense if controlling its forces) but William Morris did, as here in Useful Work versus Useless Toil:
“Nature will not be finally conquered till our work becomes a part of the pleasure of our lives.”
But I don’t think he can be accused of wanting to declare war on nature.
Very unfortunate choice of words by Morris!
What human emancipation has to do with the conquest of nature, I don’t know!
The man who wants to conquer nature is a pathetic self-destroyer.
This is where Marxists alienate the young and make words like Marxism and socialism repugnant to them.
But, annoyingly, you keep begging the question by assuming that Marx wanted to conquer nature in your sense and so contributing to making socialism repugnant to some people. And you are ignoring the fact that humans have to change nature to meet their needs even to grow vegetables. Or are you a nutarian? If not, why not?
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