China’s reckless mode of development has savaged its environment and ecology. Is a new revolution the only way to prevent disaster?
Reading matter
Archive | Marxist Ecology
Movement debate
Ecosocialism and/or Degrowth?
Should the ecological left aim to reduce all consumption, or to radically transform the prevalent type of consumption?
Book Review
Nature and Society, from Karl Marx to Rachel Carson
In ‘The Return of Nature,’ John Bellamy Foster documents the chain of people and ideas that connects Marx and Engels to the 20th century’s greatest ecological thinkers
Lockdown reading
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, Pandemic Edition (July 2020)
A special edition of Ecosocialist Bookshelf: six books we recommend for understanding the deadliest global health crisis of our time
Reading in Lockdown
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2020
Books we’re reading this month … The Life of V. Gordon Childe; The Tragedy of US Science; Four Billion Years of Life; Marx and Climate Crisis; Tell the Bosses We’re Coming; Essays on Red Rosa
Reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, March 2020
Six new books to read while maintaining social distance. Yellow Earth; Socialist Practice; Friedrich Engels; Chicken History; Traveling Plants; Coal and Empire
Metabolic Rift
Disrupting the nitrogen cycle: Articles on a major metabolic rift
How the global nitrogen cycle has been disrupted by an economic system that values profits more than life itself.
Metabolic Rifts
How Capitalism ‘Solved’ the Nitrogen Crisis (continued)
Part Four of Ian Angus’s examination of the disruption of the global nitrogen cycle by an economic system that values profits more than life itself.
Metabolic Rifts
Capitalism versus the Global Carbon Cycle
Carbon cycles regulate the Earth’s temperature and provide essential elements of life. Capitalist industry and agriculture are disrupting those vital life support systems
New resources
Marx’s notebooks and the origins of Marxist ecology
Finally published in full, Marx’s notebooks from the 1860s provide important insights into his views on ecology and capital’s destruction of nature.
Video
The Discovery and Rediscovery of Metabolic Rift
Ian Angus discusses the scientific developments that led Marx to develop metabolic rift theory in the 1800s, and a new generation to rediscover it the 21st century.
Ecosocialist Bookshelf
20 Essential Books on Marxist Ecology (Updated)
As the great American labor organizer and socialist Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones said: “Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts.”
New book launched
‘An important contribution to the fight to stop capitalist destruction’
Book review and full video of meeting to launch ‘System Change Not Climate Change: A Revolutionary Response to Environmental Crisis.’
Ecosocialist classic
Barry Commoner: The systems we depend on are upside down
Decades ago, he showed that environmental, energy and economic crises had a common cause: a system that demands increased profits at all costs
Marxist ecology
The ecosocialist views of Karl Marx – An interview with Kohei Saito
The winner of the 2018 Deutscher Prize discusses Karl Marx’s radical understanding of capitalism’s deadly disruption of the universal metabolism of nature.
Six new books
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2019
Marxist environmental essays … Science and the Anthropocene … Is disaster avoidable? … Capitalism at sea … Beef and class struggle … Climate and the biggest volcano
Book Review
New contributions to the theory and practice of Marxist Ecosocialism
Michael Löwy reviews two important books for ecosocialists: ‘Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism’ by Kohei Saito, and ‘Red-Green Revolution’ by Victor Wallis.
Interview
John Bellamy Foster on the ‘Green New Deal’
To bring about meaningful change, the resolution proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must be part of an ecological revolution with a broad social base.
Movement debate
Why Ecosocialism? A discussion of the case for a red-green future
Michael Löwy initiates a wide-ranging debate on the great transition from capitalist destruction to a just and sustainable future
Earth's metabolism
Exploring the deep biosphere: Organisms abound in regions thought devoid of life
70% of all bacteria live deep in the earth, constituting a reserve of carbon and biodiversity that vastly outnumbers and outweighs all humans combined