The Communist Manifesto and the Environment

Abstract

Most of the debate about Marx's relation to environmental thought has focused on the early philosophical critique of capitalism in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and on his later economic critique embodied in Capital in the 1860s - since in both of these works he had a great deal to say about human interactions with nature. Nevertheless, the Communist Manifesto has often been invoked as presenting a view that was anti-ecological - some would say the very definition of anti-ecological modernism. Indeed, the Manifesto is customarily viewed as a work that is at best oblivious to environmental concerns, at worst 'productivist' - even 'Promethean' - in character, steeped in notions of progress and the subjection of nature that are deeply anti-nature. This is important because the Manifesto is generally viewed as lying at the heart of the Marxian system and whatever flaws are to be found in the overall analysis are seen as having their roots there. Yet the question of the relation of the Manifesto to the environment is one that has never been addressed systematically. In our time this is no longer adequate, and it is necessary to ask: To what extent is the Manifesto - arguably the most influential political pamphlet of all time - compatible with ecological values, as we understand them today? Moreover, how is the Manifesto to be situated within the rest of Marx and Engels' thought in this respect?