The ecological forces of production: reconciling environmental and class based politics.

• Main Author: Graham, Nicolas
• Other Authors: Carroll, William K.
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Marx; ecology; forces of production
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/3493

This thesis centres on Karl Marx’s conceptualization of the forces of production, which I argue has received poor treatment in contemporary Marxist literature and is in need of reconstruction. Narrow and ‘lifeless’ understandings of the concept serve to drag Marx into a modernist ‘march of progress,’ which is at odds with the deep ecological basis of his arguments and hold back current attempts to bring ‘nature back in’ to historical materialism. Conceptualizing forces of production broadly to look at that dimension of human existence through which humanity is purposefully linked to the rest of nature, brings out that ecological content and provides a foundation upon which we can shed light on contemporary environmental crises. More specifically, I argue that this allows us to reframe the classical Marxist notion of a contradiction between the forces and relations of production—by seeing ecological thinking itself (i.e. recognition of the need to maintain and restore the indispensible ‘metabolism between humanity and nature’) and associated action, as an advancement in the productive forces, which is however being subordinated and colonized by the imperatives of capital accumulation. === Graduate