The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift Contributor(s): Foster, John Bellamy (Author), Clark, Brett (Author) |
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ISBN: 1583678409 ISBN-13: 9781583678404 Publisher: Monthly Review Press OUR PRICE: $88.11 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: February 2020 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Political Ideologies - Communism, Post-communism & Socialism - Political Science | Public Policy - Environmental Policy - Political Science | Essays |
Physical Information: 1" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (1.34 lbs) 386 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Bridges the gap between social and environmental critiques of capitalism In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx, inspired by the German chemist Justus von Liebig, argued that capitalism's relation to its natural environment was that of a robbery system, leading to an irreparable rift in the metabolism between humanity and nature. In the twenty-first century, these classical insights into capitalism's degradation of the earth have become the basis of extraordinary advances in critical theory and practice associated with contemporary ecosocialism. In The Robbery of Nature, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, working within this historical tradition, examine capitalism's plundering of nature via commodity production, and how it has led to the current anthropogenic rift in the Earth System. Departing from much previous scholarship, Foster and Clark adopt a materialist and dialectical approach, bridging the gap between social and environmental critiques of capitalism. The ecological crisis, they explain, extends beyond questions of traditional class struggle to a corporeal rift in the physical organization of living beings themselves, raising critical issues of social reproduction, racial capitalism, alienated speciesism, and ecological imperialism. No one, they conclude, following Marx, owns the earth. Instead we must maintain it for future generations and the innumerable, diverse inhabitants of the planet as part of a process of sustainable human development. |
Contributor Bio(s): Clark, Brett: - Brett Clark is assistant professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. He is co-author (with John Bellamy Foster and Richard York) of Critique of Intelligent Design.Foster, John Bellamy: - John Bellamy Foster is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. His previous books on ecology include: The Vulnerable Planet, Marx's Ecology, Hungry for Profit (edited with Fred Magdoff and Frederick Buttel), Ecology Against Capitalism, The Ecological Revolution, The Ecological Rift (with Brett Clark and Richard York), What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (with Fred Magdoff), Marx and the Earth (with Paul Burkett), and The Robbery of Nature (with Brett Clark). |