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.