Marxism, energy, and ecology: The moment of truth

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 89-101

  Tanuro, Daniel ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLIMATE CHANGE; COMPLEXITY; ENERGY USE;

EID: 78649508589     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: 15483290     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2010.524451     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Daniel Tanuro, "Marx, Mandel et les limites naturelles", Ernest Mandel Archives Internet, November 19, 2005, online at: http://www. ernestmandel.org/fr/surlavie/txt/colloque/tanuro.htm.
2. Claude Gindin, "Marx et la rente foncière,", La Pensee, 335, July-September 2003, pp. 67-79.
3. Jean-Paul Deléage, Histoire de l'écologie. Une science de l'homme et de la nature (Paris, La Découverte 1991), pp. 265-66.
4. Rent seeking is also a decisive factor in capitalism's law of population. In previous modes of production, relative overpopulation favored agricultural intensification. Under capitalism, the intensification of agriculture driven by rent seeking produces relative overpopulation.
5. See Ester Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agriculture Under Population Pressure (London and New York: George Allen and Unwin, 1965).
6. This estimate of an average 15 percent profit rate is based on data provided by Jean-Marie Chevalier, Les grandes batailles de l'énergie (Paris: Gallimard, 2004).
7. The EBI is the largest university research project yet financed by private business. The Institute is based on the Berkeley campus of the University of California, where the research findings are simply appropriated by the multinational. @ See: http://www.stopbp-berkeley.org/resources.html.
8. Michael Löwy, "1Progrès destructif. Marx, Engels et l'écologie", in J-M. Harribey and M. Löwy, Capital contre nature (Paris: PUF 2003).
9. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Penguin Classics (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 959.
10. Marx mentions the world fiber trade as one of the causes of soil impoverishment as a result of capitalism. He does not conclude from this that agricultural production should be relocated, although this is consistent with his denunciation of the separation of town and country.
11. It is superior to the Gaïa hypothesis o James Lovelock, which, whether in its "strong" or "weak" form, does not take into account the social mode of production.
12. John Bellamy oster, Marx's Ecology: Materialism And Nature (New York: Monthly Review ress, 2000).
13. J. B. Foster and Paul Burkett: "Ecological Economics And Classical Marxism: The 'Podolinsky Business' Reconsidered", Organization & Environment, Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 32-60.
14. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 363.
15. 2 was known by 1861 (John Tyndall), but no one imagined that tiny alterations in atmospheric composition would suffice to reduce significantly thermal radiation from the Earth to space. This possibility was demonstrated in 1897 by Arrhenius, who thought it would have positive effects.
16. The production of biomass is renewable but necessarily limited by autotrophic productivity and the earth's total surface area. The latter limit applies to the other forms of solar energy.
17. Oil reserves are probably not renewable geologically over time because of the existence today of organisms that degrade biomass more efficiently.
18. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1845/german-ideology/ch01c.htm.
19. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1976), Chapter 28, p. 900.
20. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
21. This concern is clear in Lenin: "The coal industry creates mobility of the population, establishes large industrial centers and inevitably leads to the introduction of public control over production. In a word, the change-over described is of the same progressive significance as the replacement of the manufactory by the factory." The Development of Capitalism in Russia, in Works, Vol. 3, available on the Marxist Internet Archive at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/dcr8vii/vii8ix.htm.
22. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, Penguin Classics (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 911.
23. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, Part III, Chapter 2, http://www.marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm.
24. E. Mandel, La dialectique de la croissance: À propos du rapport Mansholt, in Mai (Brussels, Nov.-Dec. 1972).
25. Some years later, in Power and Money (London: Verso, 1992), Mandel writes, in a self-critical way: Today we have become aware, with much delay, that dangers to the earth's non-renewable resources, and to the natural environment of human civilization and human life, also entail that the consumption of material goods and services cannot grow in an unlimited way. Saturation of demand, of consumption, is not only possible; it is absolutely necessary for the survival of humanity. That is one of the reasons why it has become a life-and-death question to eliminate a system which institutionalizes scarcity by stimulating demand for everchanging goods, with all the attendant frustrations and psychological or even macroeconomic irrationalities.
26. Which shows that J. B. Foster is wrong to attribute the loss of continuity with "Marx's ecology" to "Western Marxism" alone. For a further discussion of Foster's balance sheet of Western Marxism on ecology, see D. Tanuro, "Energie de flux ou energie de stock? Un cheval de Troie dans l'écologie de Marx", online at; http://www.europe- solidaire.org/spip. php?article8382.
27. James O'Connor, "The Second Contradiction of Capitalism: Causes and Consequences", Conference Papers, CES/CNS Pamphlet 1, Santa Cruz, 1991.
28. IPCC Working Group III contribution to the 2007 report, Technical Summary, Table TS.2, p. 39.
29. IPCC Working Group III contribution to the 2007 report, Technical Summary, Table TS.2, p. 776. The IPCC figures are of a 50-85 percent reduction globally and an 80-95 percent reduction for the developed countries (25-40 percent by 2020). Like many others, I think these objectives must be radicalized to take into account non-linear phenomena like ice-cap disintegration.
30. See also David Schwartzman, "Solar Communism", Science & Society, Vol. 60, No. 3, 1996, pp. 307-331.
31. See David Schwartzman, "Ecosocialism or Ecocatastrophe?" Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 6-33.
32. On the relationship between the long waves of capitalism and climate change, see D. Tanuro, "Alternative sociale et contrainte écologique", online at: http://www.contre-attaque.be/contrib/Contre- attaque 09-NI-01-annexe2-ContribTanuroDanie12-12.pdf.