“Metabolic Rifts and the Ecological Crisis” (coauthored with Brett Clark and Stefano B. Longo, Clark listed first), The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 651-58, DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190695545.001.0001. [PDF] The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx provides an entry point for those new to Marxism. At the same time, its chapters, written by […]
Tag Archives | Brett Clark
Making Space in Critical Environmental Geography for the Metabolic Rift
Marx’s concept of metabolic rift has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework with which to explain the socioecological crises of capitalism. Yet, despite its relevance to key concerns in critical environmental geography, it has remained marginal within the field. Here we address this by distinguishing between metabolic rift theory and two predominant Marxist approaches in […]
Marx and Alienated Speciesism
“Marx and Alienated Speciesism” (coauthered with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 70, no. 7 (December 2018), pp. 1-20. DOI: 10.14452/MR-070-07-2018-11_1. [HTML] In many animal-rights circles, Karl Marx and a long tradition of Marxian theorists are to be faulted for their speciesist treatment of nonhuman animals and the human-nonhuman animal relationship. These criticisms […]
The Robbery of Nature
“The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Metabolic Rift” (co-authored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 70, no. 3 (July-August 2018), pp. 1-20. DOI: 10.14452/MR-070-03-2018-07_1 [HTML] Marx’s notion of “the robbery of the soil” is intrinsically connected to the rift in the metabolism between human beings and the earth. To get at […]
The Expropriation of Nature
“The Expropriation of Nature” (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 10 (March 2018), pp. 1-17. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-10-2018-03_1 [HTML] To understand the present ecological crisis, it is necessary to dig much deeper into capitalism’s logic of expropriation, as first delineated by Marx during the Industrial Revolution. At the root of […]
Women, Nature, and Capital in the Industrial Revolution
“Women, Nature, and Capital in the Industrial Revolution” (coauthroed with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 8 (January 2018), pp. 1-24. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-08-2018-01 [HTML] Examining the historical specificity of women’s lives and labor in England during the Industrial Revolution allows us to better analyze the assumptions regarding gender, family, and work […]
Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology
By John Bellamy Foster on October 1, 2016 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx’s thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx’s ideas were simply a synthesis […]
Marx’s Universal Metabolism of Nature and the Frankfurt School: Dialectical Contradictions and Critical Syntheses
The Frankfurt School, as represented especially by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1944, Dialectic of Enlightenment, was noted for developing a philosophical critique of the domination of nature. Critical theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt were heavily influenced by the writings of the early Karl Marx. Yet, their critique of the Enlightenment […]
Marx’s Ecology and the Left
One of the lasting contributions of the Frankfurt School of social theorists, represented especially by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1944 Dialectic of Enlightenment, was the development of a philosophical critique of the domination of nature. Critical theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt were deeply influenced by the early writings of […]
Crossing the River of Fire
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2015 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything [argues that the source of the looming crisis from climate change] is not the planet, which operates according to natural laws, but rather the economic and social system in which we live, which treats natural limits as mere barriers to surmount. It is now doing so on a planetary scale, […]
