Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature

Abstract

The rediscovery over the last decade and a half of Marx's theory of metabolic rift has come to be seen by many on the left as offering a powerful critique of the relation between nature and contemporary capitalist society. The result has been the development of a more unified ecological world view transcending the divisions between natural and social science, and allowing us to perceive the concrete ways in which the contradictions of capital accumulation are generating ecological crises and catastrophes.… Yet, this recovery of Marx's ecological argument has given rise to further questions and criticisms.

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