Reveals
the ideal of a sustainable ecosocialist world in Marx’s writings
Karl Marx, author of what is perhaps
the world’s most resounding and significant critique of bourgeois
political economy, has frequently been described as a “Promethean.”
According to critics, Marx held an inherent belief in the necessity
of humans to dominate the natural world, in order to end material
want and create a new world of fulfillment and abundance—a world
where nature is mastered, not by anarchic capitalism, but by a
planned socialist economy. Understandably, this perspective has come
under sharp attack, not only from mainstream environmentalists but
also from ecosocialists, many of whom reject Marx outright.
Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s
Ecosocialism lays waste to accusations of Marx’s ecological
shortcomings. Delving into Karl Marx’s central works, as well as
his natural scientific notebooks—published only recently and still
being translated—Saito also builds on the works of scholars such as
John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, to argue that Karl Marx
actually saw the environmental crisis embedded in capitalism. “It
is not possible to comprehend the full scope of [Marx’s] critique
of political economy,” Saito writes, “if one ignores its
ecological dimension.”
Saito’s book is crucial today, as we
face unprecedented ecological catastrophes—crises that cannot be
adequately addressed without a sound theoretical framework. Karl
Marx’s Ecosocialism shows us that Marx has given us more than
we once thought, that we can now come closer to finishing Marx’s
critique, and to building a sustainable ecosocialist world.