{"title":"The Return of the Dialectics of Nature","authors":"J. Foster","doi":"10.1163/1569206x-20222279","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n The resurrection of the classical Marxian ecological critique in the context of the current planetary emergency has led to the return of the concept of the dialectics of nature, associated with the work of Frederick Engels in particular. In the century following the deaths of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, the dialectics-of-nature conception played a formative role in the development of the modern ecological critique within science, notably in Britain, and helped inspire the contemporary environmentalist movement. Nevertheless, all of this occurred outside the dominant streams of Marxian thought and practice, where a great chasm had arisen in this area. Whereas official Marxism in the Soviet Union reduced the dialectics of nature to a fixed dogma, Western Marxism rejected it altogether. In the current Anthropocene Epoch in the geological time scale – and in what is referred to here as the Capitalinian Age of the Anthropocene – a new historical-materialist synthesis constructed on classical foundations, reintegrating the dialectics of nature, so as to address the immense ecological challenges confronting humanity, is seen as objectively (and subjectively) necessary.","PeriodicalId":46231,"journal":{"name":"Historical Materialism-Research in Critical Marxist Theory","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Historical Materialism-Research in Critical Marxist Theory","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-20222279","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The resurrection of the classical Marxian ecological critique in the context of the current planetary emergency has led to the return of the concept of the dialectics of nature, associated with the work of Frederick Engels in particular. In the century following the deaths of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, the dialectics-of-nature conception played a formative role in the development of the modern ecological critique within science, notably in Britain, and helped inspire the contemporary environmentalist movement. Nevertheless, all of this occurred outside the dominant streams of Marxian thought and practice, where a great chasm had arisen in this area. Whereas official Marxism in the Soviet Union reduced the dialectics of nature to a fixed dogma, Western Marxism rejected it altogether. In the current Anthropocene Epoch in the geological time scale – and in what is referred to here as the Capitalinian Age of the Anthropocene – a new historical-materialist synthesis constructed on classical foundations, reintegrating the dialectics of nature, so as to address the immense ecological challenges confronting humanity, is seen as objectively (and subjectively) necessary.
期刊介绍:
Historical Materialism is an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to exploring and developing the critical and explanatory potential of Marxist theory. The journal started as a project at the London School of Economics from 1995 to 1998. The advisory editorial board comprises many leading Marxists, including Robert Brenner, Maurice Godelier, Michael Lebowitz, Justin Rosenberg, Ellen Meiksins Wood and others. Marxism has manifested itself in the late 1990s from the pages of the Financial Times to new work by Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton and David Harvey. Unburdened by pre-1989 ideological baggage, Historical Materialism stands at the edge of a vibrant intellectual current, publishing a new generation of Marxist thinkers and scholars.