Tag: Historical Materialism

  • The Podolinsky Myth

    The Podolinsky Myth: An Obituary Introduction to ‘Human Labour and Unity of Force‘,” (co-authored by John Foster and Paul Burkett,  by Sergei Podolinsky, Historical Materialism, Volume 16, Issue 1, pages 115 – 161, (2008) DOI: 10.1163/156920608X276323

    The relationship between Marxism and ecology has been sullied by Martinez-Alier’s influential interpretation of Engels’s reaction to the agricultural energetics of Sergei Podolinsky. is introduction to the first English translation of Podolinsky’s 1883 Die Neue Zeit piece evaluates Martinez-Alier’s interpretation in light of the four distinct but closely related articles Podolinsky published over the years 1880–3. is evaluation also emphasises the important but previously underrated role of energy analysis in Marx’s Capital. Engels’s criticisms of Podolinsky are found to be quite justified from both political-economy and ecological perspectives. From the standpoint of Marx and Engels’s metabolic and class-relational approach to production, Podolinsky’s attempt to reduce use-value to energy is fraught with problems. Podolinsky’s energy reductionism does not even come close to representing an alternative value analysis – let alone a groundbreaking perspective on ecological history – as was suggested by Martinez-Alier. Far from Marx and Engels’s vision of communism as an ecologically sustainable and coevolutionary human development, Podolinsky’s conception of human labor as an energy accumulation machine seems to uncritically mimic the standpoint of the capitalist interested in using nature only to extract as much energy throughput (work) as possible from the labour-power (potential work) of the worker.

  • Environmental Politics: Analyses and Alternatives


    Review Essay on special Autumn 2000 issue of Capital and Class on environmental politics, [PDF], Historical Materialism, no. 8 (Summer 2001), pp. 461-77.

    Writing about the relative neglect of Volumes Two and Three of Capital within the socialist movement of her day, Rosa Luxemburg observed that Marx’s critique of capital and his contribution to social science as a whole constituted one ‘titanic whole’ with an ‘immeasurable field of application’. It propelled him far beyond the immediate needs of the class struggle (exemplified by the theory of exploitation in Volume I), and caused him to explore other aspects of capitalism in Volumes II and III, such as the reproduction schemes, competition between capitals, the distribution of surplus value, etc. – issues that seemed to transcend the most pressing struggles of the social movement. Yet, history and the development of the movement, Luxemburg contended, would lead to renewed appreciation of Marx’s intellectual corpus: ‘Only in proportion as our movement progresses and demands the solution of new practical problems, do we dip once more into the treasury of Marx’s thought in order to extract therefrom and to utilize new fragments of his doctrine.’

  • Erde (Earth)

    Erde (Earth),” in Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch Des Marximus, Band 3 (Ebene-Extremisis) (Berlin: Argument-Verlag, 1997), pp. 669-710. [HTML]

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