La nature dans les limites du capital (et vice versa)

Abstract

A consideration of the long-term trajectory of capitalist modernity, apprehended as a whole, following on from the work of Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, remains a fruitful or indeed essential line of inquiry, both for historical investigation and social theory. Such an inquiry enables us to see that, from the era of the Voyages of Discovery onwards, capitalism developed an acute voracity regarding natural resources, doing so in planetary terms. The exploitation of labour and the appropriation of nature have gone together. In both cases, it is the fact that what has been used has not been remunerated at its worth (whether nature or low-cost labour) that we are to locate the seeds of the process of enrichment benefitting the masters of the economic play of forces. Current environmental crises thus represent the tragic but comprehensible results of this underlying trend.