Marxism and ecology Book

I first read this book in 2009. I am even more impressed with it after a second reading. I find compelling Foster's effort to establish a dialectical materialist ecology. It seems obvious that there is an important relationship between how humans treat nature and how they treat other humans. Clarified, too, is the co-evolutionary relationship between humans and nature that Foster wants to establish.

I paid much more attention this time to tension between emergent and transcendent philosophies and to the role of teleology, determinism, and contingency in the opposing philosophers (Epicurus vs. Hegel, mostly).

The cost for Foster in establishing Marx as a (or the) outstanding ecologist is that he minimizes the modernist aspects of Marx. This means that Foster underplays the short term benefits of treating Nature as a mere thing. And, it means that Foster implicitly treats Nature as either neutral or benign towards its species. But this is a small problem given the richness on offer here. Below is the review I posted from 2009.
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Foster turns to Marx's analysis of various theorists (among others, Epicurus -- on whose work Marx wrote his dissertation, Feuerbach, Malthus, and especially Darwin) to recover Marx as a materialist ecologist.

Foster provides a triple critique: (1) he very forcefully, and correctly in my view, demands that the contemporary ecological movement confront how ecological issues are embedded with social problems -- especially of class and capitalism, and, he shows how this blind spot is the result of the ecological movement's spiritualism or idealism; (2) he insists that Marxists take ecological issues seriously; and (3) he shows how a thorough understanding Marx's dialectical materialism necessarily means developing Marx's sensitivity to ecological issues. In his view, and in mine, all this means that Marx was perhaps the greatest of ecologists (along with Murry Bookchin, perhaps) and that we can use his tools, methods, and analysis to take ecological issues seriously. This makes sense to me as I believe the totality of Marx's theorizing is grounded in what Marx calls the "human metabolism with nature."

I was (and continue to be) astonished by how much I learned from this book. The sections on Malthus and Darwin are particularly revealing. I very much felt like I was living within the times and ideas of the late 18th century Europe. Marx's depth, of course, is well known. But his breadth -- from geology, to biology, to soil science, to the industrial and agricultural innovations is really awe inspiring. I remain committed to the methodological divide and difference between natural and social sciences but this book brings a bit of doubt into my clean division.

I have read parts of two of Foster's other books: The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet and Ecology Against Capitalism and will try to read more of them, but this book is where Foster's analysis is the mostly deeply rooted in texts, ideas, and in history.

I am planning a course on "Capitalism and Ecology" (to counter a theoretically thin and an all too easy "feel good environmentalism" that is now running rampant at Ithaca College) and I suspect that this book will be at the center of it.