Method in Ecological Marxism

Science and the Struggle for Change

by Hannah Holleman
In the short time available to me in this talk it is impossible to go too far
with a discussion of the state of ecological Marxism as I understand
it.1 However, I plan to discuss briefly a significant feature of the program of
ecological Marxist analysis and practice of which I consider myself a part.
Specifically, I will discuss the methodological commitments responsible for
much of the strength and insight of the ecological Marxism associated with
what John Bellamy Foster has called the third stage of ecosocialism
researchin which the goal is to employ the ecological foundations of
classical Marxian thought to confront present-day capitalism and the
planetary ecological crisis that it has engenderedtogether with the ruling
forms of ideology that block the development of a genuine
alternative.2 This, I believe, will interest scholars and activists working
toward a deeper understanding of the world with the ultimate goal of
changing it, and should interest those involved in debates regarding Marxian
theory and praxis.
Ecological Marxism: Three Stages
Since ecosocialist thought developed as a distinct tradition of inquiry in the
1980s, we may identify three stages of its development.3 This is not meant
to impose a linear periodization into which all ecosocialist work neatly fits,
but rather to represent particular shifts in the focus of debate within
ecosocialist thought over the last several decades. The first stage developed
in the 1980s and early 90s under the hegemony of green theory, during a
period of crisis in Marxism following the downfall of Soviet-type societies.
While making important contributions to ecosocialist analysis, first stage
ecosocialist thinkers often assumed Marxs work had no basis in ecological
understanding, or believed his positions were Promethean and productivist
anti-ecological in the end. As a result of these assumptions, the general
approach adopted was one of grafting Marxian conceptions onto already
existing green theoryor, in some cases, grafting green theory onto
Marxism.4
Second stage ecosocialist analyses, in contrast, sought to recover the
radical roots of Marxian theory itself in order to build on its own materialist
and naturalist foundations. Studies like Paul Burketts Marx and
Nature refuted such first-stage ecosocialist views by means of a
reconstruction and reaffirmation of Marxs own critical-ecological outlook.
This work, and that of others, including Foster, represented the rise of a
second stage of ecosocialist analysis which sought to go back to Marx and to
uncover his materialist conception of nature as an essential counterpart to
his materialist conception of history. The main project of second stage
ecosocialist thought was to transcend first-stage ecosocialism, as well as
the limitations of green theory, with its overly simplistic, idealistic, and
moralistic emphases, as a first step in the development of a more
thoroughgoing ecological Marxism.5

Today the importance of Marxs ecological and social critique is well

recognized amongst scholars and within the movement itself. And Marxian
analysis continues to develop in such a way that a third stage of
ecosocialism research has arisen, building organically onand overlapping
withthe second. One of the most important features of this third stage of
ecological Marxism is that in going back to Marxs radical materialist
critique, the recovered methodological insights of Marxs dialectic have
informed work capable of penetrating much more deeply into the heart of
the ecological and social crises of the current period than traditional green
thought.6 It is a methodology rooted in a materialist conception of natural
and social history, focused on specifying the dynamic processes of social
and ecological transformation and their consequences as they develop
historically. Moreover, it is committed to understanding the means and
barriers to transcending the existing anti-ecological and inhumane social
order.
The reinvigoration of ecological Marxism owes much to taking seriously and
building on Marxs methodological approach, wherein, as Paul Sweezy said,
we find many of his most original and significant contributions.7 Drawing
on the insights of Marxs method has allowed contemporary ecological
Marxism to integrate a vast range of historical and scientific knowledge. It is
therefore able systematically to address a wide range of concerns, playing a
leading role in bridging the social and natural sciences, and providing pathbreaking ecosocial analyses of critical emerging and persistent issues. I
would like to share with you some recent developments in one of the
research programs of ecological Marxism. But most importantly, my goal in
this talk is to outline key features of the methodology that account for the
power and insight of this work.
So central is Marxs methodological approach to the development of his vast
insights, Lukcs wrote in History and Class Consciousness that, with regards
to Marxism, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method.8 In what follows I will
outline central aspects of Marxian methodology brought to bear and yielding
fruit in third-stage ecosocialist research. These central features are: (1) A
Commitment to Materialism; (2) Concern for the Appropriate Use of
Abstraction; (3) A Dialectical Approach; (4) A Focus on Historical Specificity;
and (5) Political Commitment (to Socio-Ecological Change).
Important Aspects of Marxs Methodological Approach in
Ecological Marxism Today
Commitment to Materialism
The strength of ecological Marxism, as it is practiced today amongst
scholars associated with the third stage of ecosocialist research, is that it
takes as its objective the confrontation of reality with reason as the means
with which to draw the necessary conclusions for conscious action
designed to bring about desirable change. This confrontation, as Sweezy
and Paul Baran discussed, inevitably involve[s] comparisons of what is with
what would be reasonable.9
For Marx, what was reasonable was explained not in abstract ethical terms
or principles, but in terms of an understanding of the appropriate goals of
socialism based on concrete, deep investigation into existing social relations

and the real barriers these presented to the development of a society in

which the free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all and wherein the freely associated producers [could]
govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way.'10
Marxs confrontation of reality, his investigation of what is, was based
philosophically and methodologically on a materialist conception of social
and natural history. This made possible his powerful critique of capitalist
social relations and inherent class antagonisms, which result in an
irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism as
prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.11 It also made possible his
recognition that the transcendence of class antagonisms is necessary, but
not sufficient for ecologically sustainable human development. Moving
beyond socially and ecologically destructive social organization requires
the explicit integration of ecological and other communal concerns into the
anticapitalist revolutionary process itself.12
Because his methodology was rooted in a materialist conception of history,
Marx didnt take anything for granted, but rather looked for the historical
development, consequences, and interrelations of various aspects of the
whole of social and biological evolutionary development. As a result of this
methodological approach, Marxs engagement with the natural and social
sciences allowed his critique of capitals class relations to develop as an
ecological critique, while extending to a range of other concerns, including
the oppressive nature of the family and gender relations in bourgeois
society, the structure of political power and the state, and specific
technological and legal developments, along with much else. The struggle
against the exploitation and oppression of the working class in Marx and
Engels conception included the struggle against the oppression of women,
imperialist aggression and colonial exploitation, and the destruction of
nature, all outcomes of a particular ensemble of historical developments
that must be transcended.
Appropriate Use of Abstraction
A second essential feature of Marxs method is the critical use of
abstraction. In the Preface to Capital Marx wrote, in the analysis of
economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of
assistance. The force of abstraction must replace both.13 His point was not
that we do not need microscopes, but that we need to choose the
appropriate tools of science for the problem under study. Abstraction in
scientific investigation allows us to bring the essential into relief and to
make possible its analysis.14 Choices about our abstractions have to do
with the problem we are investigating and what we determine are its
essential elements. Determining what is essential, however, is not a
straightforward task. We make provisional hypotheses about what
constitutes the essential aspects of any problem and constantly check these
against the data of experience, or continued investigation into the
actuality of historical development.15
For Marx, the determination of what was essential took him into deep
studies of natural and social history, which he describes in various places,
including the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Based on his intensive studies, he asserted, for example, that the capital

relationan antagonistic class relationwas the all-dominating economic

power of bourgeois society, which conditioned relations between people
and between human society and the land.16 This class relation was the
center of investigation and abstraction was employed to isolate it, to
reduce it to its purest form, to enable it to be subjected to the most
painstaking analysis, free of all unrelated disturbances.17
For different problems we apply the tool of abstraction in different ways.
One may abstract from a difference which another is trying to explain, yet
each may be justified from the point of view of the problem which he is
studying.18 The use of different levels of abstraction, from low to high, also
reflects the purpose of the investigation. Mediating factors may be removed
from one level of analysis to clarify a particular relation, and reintroduced at
another, depending on the object of study. The legitimate purpose of
abstraction in social sciences, of course, is never to get away from the real
world but rather to isolate certain aspects of the real world for intensive
investigation.19
Along with our scientific concerns, our abstractions also reflect our
prejudices and political commitments. As Marxist scientists Richard Lewontin
and Richard Levins wrote, Much abstraction is evasive of what matters,
chosen for reasons of safety and convenience. They use as an example
neoclassical economics, which posits the individual making choices in
ahistoric markets. While this, they say, leads to elegant theorems about
rational choice, it hides exploitation, monopoly, class conflict, and the
evolution of capitalism. They also cite Bertolt Brechts warning that we live
in a terrible time when to talk about trees is a kind of silence about
injustice.' Today, of course, trees and nature more generally figure
prominently in the study of justice. But not always, and the link is usually
insufficiently made. This point is so important, especially as a critique of
environmental perspectives de-linked from critical social analysis. This delinking in thought of essential features that are linked in reality has the
consequence of distorting understanding of the specific social roots of
ecological crises across societies, as well as the kind of change necessary to
resolve them.20
The goal for ecological Marxists today is to bring a Marxian methodology to
bear on the vast body of historical and scientific knowledge in its current
stage of development and push this knowledge forward under the
conditions of contemporary social praxis.21 The critical use of abstraction
is central to this process.
A Dialectical Approach
Upon determining the essential aspects of a problem, and therefore
clarifying the matter at stake, dialectical analysis allows one to steer a
cautious path between the Scylla of reductionism and the Charybdis of
holism. Richard York and Philip Mancus write, as reductionism fails
because of its focus on parts, holism without dialectics fails because of its
inability to recognize divisions, tensions, and internal contradictions, and its
tendency toward functionalism.22
There are some tendencies in green thought to go back to a conception of
oneness, suggesting that because of the interconnectedness of

phenomena, they are all One, an important element of mystical sensibility

that asserts our Oneness with the universe. But, as Lewontin and Levins
write, of course we can separate intellectual constructs. We have to in
order to recognize and investigate them. But it is not sufficient. After
separating them, we have to join them again, show their interpenetration,
their mutual determination, their entwined evolution, and yet also their
distinctness. They are not One.' They warn against the one-sidedness in
holism that stresses the connectedness of the world but ignores the relative
autonomy of parts.23
This is an especially important point for ecological Marxists, interested in
uncovering causality in order to better direct our efforts at social change.
There is no analytical rigor in treating the whole without recognizing that,
as York and Mancus write, while the social is rooted in and emergent from
the biological, the social also has causal efficacy upon the biological. As a
result, for those engaged in social change efforts, it is critical to study the
dynamic dialectical interaction between nature and culture.24 And, at
another level of abstraction, it is important to break down culture and the
social to understand relations involved in the exploitation of nature and
people, by specific classes, for example. Then we might be interested in
further specification of the gender, ethnic, and racial dynamics of class
relations in the world today, and so on, and how these shape the
nature/culture dialectic.
Historical Character of Marxs Thought
Marxs dialectical and materialist approach, as Lukcs said, is in its
innermost essence historical.25 For Marx, social reality is not so much a
specified set of relations, still less a conglomeration of things. It is rather the
process of change inherent in a specified set of relations. In other words,
social reality is the historical process, a process which, in principle, knows no
finality and no stopping places.26 The libratory nature of the historical
character of Marxs thought is the recognition of the possibility and actuality
of change. But the direction of change is not determined mechanically.
Humans act, but part of the struggle of change, as Marx wrote, is that we
do not make history just as [we] please, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the past.27
The only universal, transhistorical reality of the human condition for Marx is
that we are individually and collectively the sum total of social and natural
history, and the joint development of these conditions shapes how we live,
the way we think, and what possibilities exist for change. On the biological
side, he writes that the only inevitability is that man livesfrom nature, i.e.,
nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he
is not to die.28 This dialogue is the labor process, which is first of all, a
process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own
actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself
and nature.29 Through this process humans transform nature and are in
turn transformed. Altogether this represents the universal condition for the
metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man and nature, the
everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence.30
The historical character of Marxs thought, the recognition that society both
is changing and, within limits, can be changed, leads to a critical approach

to every form of society.31 It also leads to a critical approach to every

phenomena under investigation and poses a challenge to ahistorical
conceptualizations of existing conditions. For ecological Marxists, static and
essentializing categories in mainstream bourgeois societysuch as the
binary man and womanare understood as the product of particular
historical developments, rather than as everlasting, inherent realities of
human existence. Understanding the world through such an historical lens
makes possible what Marx calls the ruthless criticism of all that exists,
ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and
in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that
be.32
Linking Ethics and Critical Social Analysis in the Political
Commitment to Change
A final feature of Marxs methodology uniting the approaches of many third
stage ecological Marxists is the commitment to living the eleventh thesis, or
keeping at the forefront that the goal is not merely to interpret the world,
but to change it. This means our work, including our theoretical
development, must link philosophy, ethics, and critical social analysis.
In Biology Under the Influence, Lewontin and Levins wrote that any theory
of society has to undergo a test, What does it do to Children?33 This was in
the context of a discussion of methodology, specifically Strategies for
Abstractionthe title of the chapter in which the topic appears.
Raising the question of the implications for children of our work in
developing social theory illustrated the impossibility of separating questions
of reality from questions of ethics. The impossibility arises because theories
support practices that serve some and harm others. While philosophers go
through great contortions to separate questions of reality from questions of
ethics, the historic process unites them. Ethicists may debate, [for
example], over dinner, the rational reasons for feeding the hungry, but for
people in poverty food is not a philosophical problem.34
For ecological Marxists, even the most committed investigation of ethics
cannot be a substitute for a radical critique of politics in its frustrating and
alienating contemporary reality.35 For Marx, as Cornel West wrote, an
adequate theoretic account of ethical notions, e.g., just or right, must
understand them as human conventional attempts to regulate social
practices in accordance with the requirements of a specific system of
production.36 In the end, Istvn Mszros suggests, the measure of the
success of our ethics in practice can only be their ability to constantly
maintain awareness of and reanimate practical criticism towards the real
target of socialist transformation: to go beyond capital in all its actually
existing and feasible forms through the redefinition and practically viable
rearticulation of the labor process.37
Marxs Method and Third Stage Ecosocialist Thought
The commitment to a materialist conception of natural and social history,
attention to critical and appropriate uses of abstraction, and the
employment of dialectical analysis and an historical approach, has led to
path-breaking analyses in ecological Marxism. These analyses are able at
once to deal with broad sweeps of human history, shed new light on

concrete, emerging problems, and contribute to debates shaping

movements for change today. They transcend the divides between the
natural and social sciences and between the scholar, practitioner, and
activist.
An important recent example of such work is The Tragedy of the
Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture (2015) by Stefano B. Longo,
Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark.38This study illustrates the relationship
between the whole of capitalist development and the profound changes in
the ecology of the oceans, aquaculture, and fisheries engendered by the
endless drive for accumulation. It provides a systematic critique of
prevailing market approaches to addressing ecological crises, as well as the
associated tragedy of the commons school of thought. It ends with an
important chapter on Healing the Riftsurgent reading for all concerned
with the planetary crisis of the oceans and building an alternative to this
ecologically and socially destructive social order.
Other areas in which the method described here is applied by ecological
Marxists include, but are not limited to: soil fertility, fertilizers, agriculture,
forest management, the carbon and nitrogen metabolism, climate change,
feminism and ecology, stockyards/meat-packing, environmental justice,
unequal exchange, ecological imperialism, public health, ecological
economics, urban and rural development, and much more.
For a compendium of examples of some of the great work by ecological
Marxists, please see the metabolic rift bibliography published online
by Monthly Review. It is a wonderful resource for scholars and activists
alike.39 The Environment & Science section of the Haymarket Books
online catalogue also lists important contributions in this area.40
Conclusion: Importance
Ecological Civilization

of

Method

in

the

Struggle

for

Given the point of this conference is consideration of the contribution of

varieties of Marxism to the project of building Ecological Civilization, I will
end by discussing why Marxs method is so important in this task. As we all
know, the ideological form of slogans, or statements of political principles
and goals, may differ widely from their substantive, practical content. Marx
and Engels employed their critical method to take to task not only the
bourgeoisie, but also socialists, communists, anarchists, and others
struggling for alternatives, through critical analyses of political goals and
strategies. They recognized contradictions between stated ideological
commitment and practice, and highlighted the inevitable contradictions of
programs that did not take adequate account of existing material conditions
or that would result in new forms of oppression, and so on.
For all of us involved in the struggle for a new world, we need a
methodology for, and commitment to, critical social analysis through which
we constantly assesses the direction in which we are headed, how this
conforms to our goals, and whether our goals should change. For Marx and
Engels, and for ecological Marxists today, the struggle is only meaningful if
it, in social and ecological content, (1) promotes substantive material and
political equality, in other words, aims for the self-empowerment of the
associated producers; (2) entails the end of oppression and exploitation in

all its forms; and (3) has the ultimate goal of the realization of a society in
which the free development of each is the condition of the free
development of all, and in which the social metabolism connecting human
beings to the universal metabolism of nature is governed in a rational
way.41 Whether we describe this struggle as one toward Ecological
Civilization, or something else, critical social analysis and investigation
allows us to assess and overcome obstacles to movement in this direction.
In contrast to green theory, or ecologism (which tends to be idealistic and
ethical in orientation, or even purely romantic) and to ecological
modernization theory (which tends to defend the status quo as a whole),
Marxs method allows for the critical function of social analysis required by
movements for effective social change. It moves us beyond the
appearances of social realities to their essence, which Marx believed was
the reason for, and was only possible through, scientific investigation.
The point in the end is not that we follow Marx because it is Marx, but
because the methodological innovations that began with Marx remain a
powerful aid in our efforts at social change. We need the capacity to know
as well as possible, what is, and compare the current reality with what
would be reasonable in order to draw the necessary conclusions for
conscious action designed to bring about desirable change.42 Ultimately, it
is only in the context of our concrete struggles for change that any
philosophical or scientific approach, especially a Marxist one, becomes
meaningful and full of life.
Thank you.
Notes
1.

The terms ecological Marxism and ecosocialism are used here in

reference to identified intellectual projects and movement terminology.
While this usage was appropriate for the context in which this talk was
given, the ecological critique and imperative for change is already explicit
in Marxs work and many socialist traditions. Therefore I consider myself a
socialist, rather than an ecosocialist, and the work described here is at
heart simply Marxist in approach.

2.

John Bellamy Foster, Foreword to Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A

Red and Green Perspective(Chicago: Haymarket Press, 2014; originally
1999), xii.

3.

Foster, Foreword, Marx and Nature.

4.

Ibid, viii.

5.

Ibid, ix.

6.

Ibid, xiixiii.

7.

Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York:

Monthly Review Press 1977; originally 1942), 11.

8.

Georg Lukcs, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1971; originally 1968), 1.

9.

Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York:

Monthly Review Press, 1966), 134.

10.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago:

Haymarket Press, 2005; originally 1848), 71; Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3
(New York: Penguin Books, 1991; originally 18631865), 959.

11.

Marx, Capital, vol. 3, 949.

12.

Burkett, Marx and Nature, xxvi.

13.

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (New York: Penguin, 1990, originally

1867), 90.

14.

Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, 12.

15.

Ibid, 1215.

16.

Karl Marx, Grundrisse (London: Penguin, 1973; originally 18571858),

107; Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, 16.

17.

Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, 1617.

18.

Ibid, 12.

19.

Ibid, 18.

20.

Richard
Lewontin
and
Richard
Levins, Biology
Influence (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 15152.

21.
22.

Under

the

Foster, Foreword, Marx and Nature, xi.

Richard York and Philip Mancus, Critical Human Ecology: Historical
Materialism and Natural Laws,Sociological Theory 27 (2009): 134.

23.

Lewontin and Levins, Biology Under the Influence, 106.

24.

York and Mancus, Critical Human Ecology, 13435.

25.

Lukcs quoted in Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, 20

21.

26.
27.
28.

Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, 2021.

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York:
International Publishers, 1994, originally 1852), 15.
Karl Marx, Early Writings (London: Penguin, 1974.

29.

Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: Penguin Books, 1990; originally
1867), 283.

30.

Ibid, 290.

31.

Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, 21.

32.

Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge (1843), https://marxists.org.

33.

Lewontin and Levins, Biology Under the Influence, 165.

34.

Ibid.

35.

Istvn Mszros, Beyond Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press,

2010; originaly 1995), 410.

36.

Cornel West, The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (New York:

Monthly Review Press, 1991), 99. See also John Bellamy Foster,
Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist
Thought, Monthly Review 45, no. 2 (1993): 8.

37.

Mszros, Beyond Capital, 410.

38.

Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, The Tragedy of

the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 2015).

39.

See Ryan Wishart, R. Jamil Jonna, and Jordan Besek, The Metabolic
Rift: A Selected Bibliography, October 16, 2013, http://monthlyreview.org.

40.

Haymarket
Books,
Science, http://haymarketbooks.org.

41.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 30 (New York:
International Publishers, 1975), 5466.

42.

Environment

Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 134.

&