Seizing the means of innovation: On the relationship between Marxism and ecomodernism

Abstract

Recent efforts to articulate a “socialist ecomodernist” politics have spurred debate over the relationship between Marxism and ecomodernism. Degrowth-aligned socialists critique ecomodernism for its productivism and naive techno-optimism; ecomodernist socialists respond that ecomodernism's grounding of ecological politics in human material needs and focus on production's technological metabolism broadly aligns with historical materialism. This paper first outlines the homologies and contradictions between Marxism and ecomodernism and then turns to one area of potential dialectical synthesis: addressing capitalism's ecological crises requires a systematic account of technological innovation. To this end we put forward eleven axioms distilling Marx's philosophico-anthropological account of technology. These axioms reflect Marx's understanding of technological innovation as both a source of tension, since productive forces consistently outpace the social world and the relations of production, and crucial to transcending class societies. We argue that a Marxist response to climate breakdown must address how a communist movement will manage the unintended, indirect ecological impacts of production. Marxists have always understood that the proletariat must control the means of production in order to address class-based inequality. In the era of climate breakdown, Marxists must be equally explicit about technological innovation. If we are to protect nature while progressing toward Marx's “realm of freedom”, the task now is also to seize and reconfigure the means of innovation.