Eco-Marxism and Prometheus Unbound

 

John Bellamy Foster

In the West, ecological modernisation as a model for addressing environmental problems has long been the subject of critique by ecosocialists and by radical ecologists in general. In contrast, in China, ecological modernism as a way of redressing environmental problems has the strong backing of ecological Marxists. The primary reason for these differing approaches should be obvious. In the West, the notion of ecological modernisation, while unobjectionable in itself as part of a comprehensive process of environmental change, has come to stand ideologically for the restrictive model of capitalist ecological modernisation. Here it is suggested that environmental problems can be addressed by technological means alone within the established social relations of capitalism in a purely reformist context. Distinct from this, socialist ecological modernisation, as envisioned in China and in a few other postrevolutionary states, is substantively different. It requires a break with the social relations of capital accumulation, facilitating changes in the human relation to nature that are of a revolutionary character, aimed at the creation of an ecological civilisation geared


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