Theory Of Metabolic Rift Research Articles

The Robbery of Nature

Marx's notion of "the robbery of the soil" is intrinsically connected to the rift in the metabolism between human beings and the earth. To get at the complexities of his metabolic rift theory, it is useful to look separately at the issues of the robbery and the rift, seen as separate moments in a single development.

Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology

The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx's thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx's ideas were simply a synthesis of German idealism, French utopian socialism, and British political economy.… The rediscovery of Marx's metabolism and ecological value-form theories, and of their role in the analysis of ecological crises, has generated sharply discordant trends. Despite their importance in the development of both Marxism and ecology, neither idea is without its critics. One manifestation of the divergence on the left in this respect has been an attempt to appropriate aspects of Marx's social-metabolism analysis in order to promote a crude social "monist" view based on such notions as the social "production of nature" and capitalism's "singular metabolism." Such perspectives, though influenced by Marxism, rely on idealist, postmodernist, and hyper-social-constructivist conceptions, which go against any meaningful historical-materialist ecology and tend to downplay (or to dismiss as apocalyptic or catastrophist) all ecological crises—insofar as they are not reducible to the narrow law of value of the system.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Ecovillages, Restitution, and the Political-Economic Opportunity Structure: An Urban Case Study in Mitigating the Metabolic Rift

In cities around the world, environmental concerns have spurred urban activists to organize alternative forms of settlement. Here, we assess efforts by one ecovillage in the Pacific Northwest to change their lifestyles in accordance with ecological principles. Drawing from the concepts of restitution and the political-economic opportunity structure (PEOS), we find that ecovillagers intend to mitigate the antagonism between humans and nature, but they face limitations from the larger urban and political-economic contexts. As such, this study describes the routine practices and experiences of urban ecovillagers as an example of the micro-level dynamics and tensions implied in metabolic rift theory.

Marxism in the Anthropocene: Dialectical Rifts on the Left

ABSTRACTNatural scientists have pointed to the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, with the precise dating not yet decided, but often traced to the Great Acceleration of the human impact on the environment since 1945. Thus understood, the Anthropocene largely coincides with the rise of the modern environmental movement and corresponds to the age of planetary crisis. This paper looks at the evolution of Marxian and left contributions to environmental thought during this period. Although Marx’s ecological materialism is now widely recognized, with the rediscovery of his theory of metabolic rift, the debate has recently shifted to ecological dialectics, including dualism, monism, totality, and mediation, generating a conflict between ecological Marxism and radical ecological monism. It is argued here that only an ecological Marxism, rooted in a materialist dialectic of nature and society, is able to engage effectively with the Great Climacteric that increasingly governs our times.

Neomarxist approaches to environmental crisis and sustainable development

This paper discusses two neomarxist theories of ecological crises - theory of metabolic rift and the second contradiction of capitalism theory. The goal of the paper is to present two critical theories and to confront them so similarities, differences, flaws and contributions of those theories can be identified. In the first part of the paper author classifies different approaches to ecological crisis and sustainable development in order to relate two neomarxist theories to other approaches to the topic. In the second part, author discusses theory of metabolic rift, which is a heuristic analysis of Marx?s original work. In other words, this theory represents a new reading of the classic and tries to integrate it?s new findings about envirnmental side of Marx?s thought into a contemporary marxist theory. Third part of the paper is reserved for the second contradiction of capitalism, a neomarxist theory of economic crisis which can be applied as a theory of ecological crisis. Two theories are then confronted after which similarities and differences between them are pointed out. The author concludes the paper by stressing out the flaws and scientific contributions of the two theories.

The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic

A world-system analysis of the ecological rift generated by capitalism requires as one of its elements a developed theory of the unequal ecological exchange between center and periphery. After reviewing the literature on unequal exchange (both economic and ecological) from Ricardo and Marx to the present, a new approach is provided, based on a critical appropriation of systems ecologist Howard Odum's emergy (spelled with an m) analysis. Odum's contribution offers key elements of a wider dialectical synthesis, made possible in part by his intensive studies of Marx's political-economic critique of capitalism and by Marx's own theory of metabolic rift.

Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature

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.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Vanished in gaps, vanquished in rifts: the social ecology of urban spatial change in a working class residential area, Peykan-Shahr, Tehran, Iran

The article aims to understand the forms and processes of socio-ecological changes following sociogeographical dislocation of workers in a working-class neighborhood (Peykan-Shahr) in Iran. The article integrates theories of gentrification and metabolic rift. Existing studies on urbanization in Iran refute the possibility of gentrification. This study, in contrast, by drawing attention to peculiarities of the capitalist economy in Iran, adapts the basic economic mechanisms of gentrification such as the rent/value gap and the concept of absolute rent, concluding that Peykan-Shahr is indeed in a process of gentrification. The theory of metabolic rift adds theoretical dimensions and complexity to the analysis and provides a richer understanding of the case. Grounded in Marx's labor theory of value, the analysis shows that by mediating the exploitation of labor/nature by capital through displacing workers from their houses, gentrification in Peykan-Shahr has caused a socio-ecological metabolic rift in terms of labor reproduction and deterioration of labor power.Key words: Socio-ecological metabolic rift, gentrification, absolute rent, Marxism, labor reproduction, political economy of Iran.

The Metabolic Rifts of Livestock Agribusiness

Massive structural, geographic, and socioeconomic transformations have taken place in livestock production since the mid-20th century. Drawing from Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, as developed by John Bellamy Foster and others, this article examines the recent structural changes in relation to global carbon, nitrogen, and water cycling. The authors argue that the environmental consequences of large-scale, intensive, industrial livestock production are a result of capitalism’s relentless drive for self-accumulation and, consequently, a socialist alternative must be explored to heal the ecological ruptures between (a) livestock and the land and (b) society from both livestock and the land. Insights from local food projects and the animal rights movement have pointed the way to a more rational, ethical, and sustainable future.

The Town–Country Antithesis and the Environment

Current sociological interest in “real utopias” demands a critical evaluation of potential academic contributions to the subject. The following is a sociological critique of the real utopian project of abolishing the antithesis between town and country. The analysis uncovers a fundamental dilemma in theorizing how to transform this antithesis. On one hand, social and natural scientists have acknowledged that modern urbanization and the urban–rural divide contribute to the creation of a rift in the relationship between humans and the natural environment. On the other hand, modern cities, based on arguments about the efficiency of urban density, are defended by a wide variety of scholars. Nevertheless, in turning to a socioecological framework of analysis based on the work of Marx and Engels and metabolic rift theory, this dilemma can be resolved. This framework emphasizes that modern cities are the result of interdependent development, which is expressed through the antithesis between town and country. This antithesis is the intervening mechanism in which the metabolic rift is spatially observed and carried out. That the ecological rift is now planetary demands a real utopian project in which dramatically different social and spatial relations are theorized.

Transcending the metabolic rift: a theory of crises in the capitalist world-ecology

The theory of metabolic rift is among the most dynamic perspectives in critical environmental studies today. This essay argues that the problem with the metabolic rift perspective is not that it goes too far, but that it does not go far enough. I take a ‘use and transcend’ approach that takes metabolic rift theory as an indispensable point of departure in building a unified theory of capitalist development – one that views the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of power, and the production of nature as differentiated moments within the singularity of historical capitalism. My response unfolds through two related arguments. First, the theory of metabolic rift, as elaborated by Foster, Clark, and York, is grounded in a Cartesian binary that locates biophysical crises in one box, and accumulation crises in another. This views biophysical problems as consequences of capitalist development, but not constitutive of capitalism as a historical system. The second part of this essay moves from critique to synthesis. Drawing out the value-theoretical implications of the metabolic rift – through which capitalism's greatest contradiction becomes the irremediable tension between the ‘economic equivalence’ and the ‘natural distinctiveness’ of the commodity (Marx) – I illuminate the possibilities for a unified theory of capitalist development and crisis over the longue durée. This is the theory of capitalism as world-ecology, a perspective that joins the accumulation of capital and the production of nature in dialectical unity. This perspective begins from the premise that capitalism does not act upon nature so much as develop through nature–society relations. Capitalism does not have an ecological regime; it is an ecological regime.

Mediterranean Rift: Socio-Ecological Transformations in the Sicilian Bluefin Tuna Fishery

This article examines the social and ecological transformations in the Sicilian bluefin tuna fishery during the modern era. The analysis utilizes a sociological framework that draws on theory from environmental sociology, specifically metabolic rift theory. Escalating pressure on the fishery has contributed to a host of environmental and social problems, including pushing this important fishery to the brink of collapse. Using a combination of primary and secondary source data, this research employs sociological methods and analyzes recent changes in the socio-ecological metabolism of the fishery. The study explores the unsustainable nature of capitalist food production by examining the ‘rift’ in the society and nature metabolism that has emerged in the modern Sicilian bluefin tuna fishery. It advances the discussion on the ways in which the social relations of modern capitalist production have transformed the socio-ecological metabolism in agri-food production.

Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change, and the biospheric rift

There is widespread agreement in the natural sciences that observed increases in average global temperatures over the past century are due in large part to the anthropogenic (human generated) emission of greenhouse gases, primarily stemming from fossil fuel combustion and land use changes (e.g., deforestation). Many social processes have been identified for their contribution to climate change. However, few theoretical approaches have been used to study systematically the relations of the social with the biosphere. Our goal is to illustrate how the theory of metabolic rift provides a powerful approach for understanding human influence on the carbon cycle and global climate change. We extend the discussions of metabolism (the relationship of exchange between nature and humans) and metabolic rift to the biosphere in general and to the carbon cycle in particular. We situate our discussion of the metabolic rift in the historical context of an expanding, global capitalist system that largely influences the organization of human interactions with the environment. The general properties of a metabolic rift between nature and society include the disruption or interruption of natural processes and cycles, the accumulation of waste, and environmental degradation. Due to capitalism's inherent expansionary tendencies, technological development serves to escalate commodity production, which necessitates the burning of fossil fuels to power the machinery of production. As this process unfolded historically, it served to flood carbon sinks and generate an accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Technological “improvements” have actually increased the amount of resources used, since expansion in production typically outstrips gains in efficiency – a situation known as the Jevons paradox. The theory of the metabolic rift reveals how capital contributes to the systematic degradation of the biosphere.

Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology

This article addresses a paradox: on the one hand, environmental sociology, as currently developed, is closely associated with the thesis that the classical sociological tradition is devoid of systematic insights into environmental problems; on the other hand, evidence of crucial classical contributions in this area, particularly in Marx, but also in Weber, Durkheim, and others, is too abundant to be convincingly denied. The nature of this paradox, its origins, and the means of transcending it are illustrated primarily through an analysis of Marx's theory of metabolic rift, which, it is contended, offers important classical foundations for environmental sociology.