Nevertheless, because Marx’s overall critique of political economy remained unfinished, these and other aspects of his larger materialist conception of nature and history were incompletely developed – even in those works, such as Capital, volume 1, published in his lifetime. Moreover, the relation of his developed political–economic critique in Capital to the wider corpus of […]
Archive | Book Chapters
The Dialectics of Nature and Marxist Ecology
For ‘Western Marxism’ — a term introduced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 1955 in his Adventures of the Dialectic (1973) to describe the philosophical tendency stemming from Georg Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness (1971; originally published in 1923) — no concept internal to Marxism has been more antithetical to the genuine development of historical materialism than […]
Ecological Imperialism
“Ecological Imperialism: The Curse of Capitalism,” (coauthored with Brett Clark), In Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, ed., The Socialist Register, 2004 (London: Merlin Press, 2004), pp. 230-46. Translations: Catalan translation in Corrent Roig, June 6, 2010, http://www.correntroig.org. Spanish translation in El Nuevo Desafío Imperial: Socialist Register 2004 (Clasco, February 2005). Portugese translation in O Novo Desafio […]
Paul Sweezy and Monopoly Capitalism
”Paul Sweezy and Monopoly Capitalism,” in Doug Dowd, ed., Understanding Capitalism: Critical Analysis from Karl Marx to Amartya Sen (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 132-50. Translations: Spanish translation in Doug Dowd, ed., Entender el capitalismo Hacienda, 2006.
The Ecological Tyranny of the Bottom Line
In recent decades environmentalists have directed a persistent ecological critique at economics, contending that economics has failed to value the natural world. Lately economists have begun to respond to this critique, and a rapidly growing sub discipline of environmental economics has emerged that is dedicated to placing economic values on nature and integrating the environment […]
The Communist Manifesto and the Environment
Most of the debate about Marx’s relation to environmental thought has focused on the early philosophical critique of capitalism in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and on his later economic critique embodied in Capital in the 1860s – since in both of these works he had a great deal to say about human […]
The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988
In the increasingly universal monopoly-capitalist economy and culture of the late twentieth century, people no longer need what they want or want what they need. Wants are artificially manufactured while the most desperate needs of innumerable individuals remain unfulfilled. Although labor productivity has steadily risen, the overall efficiency and rationality of society has in many […]
Liberal Practicality and the U.S. Left
“Liberal Practicality and the U.S. Left,” in Ralph Miliband, Leo Panitch and John Saville, ed., Socialist Register, 1990: The Retreat of the Intellectuals. (London: Merlin Press, 1990), pp. 265-89.
The Uncoupling of the World Order
In every discussion of the current global crisis one single fact eclipses all others – the demise of undisputed US hegemony within the world hierarchy of nation states. Despite differing al political persuasions, there seems to be widespread agreement among social scientists that it is only in this context that the chief threats of our […]
The Age of Restructuring
“The Age of Restructuring,” in Arthur MacEwan and William K. Tabb, ed. Instability and Change in the International Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), pp. 281-97.
