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Marx and Environmental Catastrophe

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Rethinking Alternatives with Marx

Part of the book series: Marx, Engels, and Marxisms ((MAENMA))

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Abstract

This chapter summarizes current predictions as to the likely prospect of environmental catastrophe in the coming century, and then asks a series of questions about prospective Marxist responses to the problem. A brief overview of Marx's view of nature reveals an ambiguity about prospective future consumption by the working classes in a communist society. This is followed by scrutiny of Soviet approaches to consumerism in particular in which a similar tension is evident between opposition to crass consumerism and luxury and the need to satisfy widespread and increasing demands for commodities. Here a degree of inevitability in the development of consumer culture is evident. Finally the specific problems resulting from the need to place an abrupt brake on patterns of industrialization is addressed. An eight-point programme is indicated as necessary to tackle the most obvious immediate issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, MECW, vol. 3, pp. 212–13, 216–17, 326.

  2. 2.

    See Gregory Claeys, Marx and Marxism (London: Penguin Books, 2018), pp. 103–4.

  3. 3.

    See Gregory Claeys, After Consumerism: Utopianism for a Dying Planet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

  4. 4.

    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, MECW, vol. 6, p. 488. On anti-urbanism in the USSR in this period, see S. Frederick Starr, ‘Visionary Town Planning During the Cultural Revolution’, in: Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 207–40.

  5. 5.

    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men’s Association. Report and Documents Published by Decision of the Hague Congress of the International’, MECW, vol. 23, p. 543. He associated such ideas with August Willich, a revolutionary rival amongst the German exiles, as well as Bakunin.

  6. 6.

    Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–61, MECW, vol. 28, p. 451.

  7. 7.

    Timo Vihavainen, ‘Consumerism and the Soviet Project’, in: Timo Vihavainen and Elena Bogdanova (eds.), Communism and Consumerism: The Soviet Alternative to the Affluent Society (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 29.

  8. 8.

    Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 147.

  9. 9.

    Anne E. Gorsuch, Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 16, 89–90.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., pp. 56, 89.

  11. 11.

    Timo Vihavainen, ‘The Spirit of Consumerism in Russia and the West’, in: Communism and Consumerism, p. 15.

  12. 12.

    Quoted in David Crowley and Susan E. Reid, ‘Introduction: Pleasures in Socialism?’, in: David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (eds.), Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2010), p. 23.

  13. 13.

    Adele Marie Barker, ‘The Culture Factory: Theorizing the Popular in the Old and New Russia’, in: Adele Marie Barker (ed.), Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society Since Gorbachev (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 32–3.

  14. 14.

    Timo Vihavainen, ‘The Spirit of Consumerism in Russia and the West’, in: Communism and Consumerism, p. 4.

  15. 15.

    Even as late as 1980, only 15% of Soviet citizens owned cars.

  16. 16.

    Djurdja Bartlett, FashionEast: The Spectre That Haunted Communism (Boston: MIT Press, 2010), p. 68.

  17. 17.

    Amy E. Randall, The Soviet Dream World of Retail Trade and Consumption in the 1930s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 42–3.

  18. 18.

    Nicholas S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1946), pp. 317–20.

  19. 19.

    Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (Oxford: Berg, 2003), p. 116.

  20. 20.

    Larissa Zakharova, ‘How and What to Consume: Patterns of Soviet Clothing Consumption in the 1950s and 1960s’, in: Vihavainen and Bogdanova (eds.), Communism and Consumerism, pp. 104–5.

  21. 21.

    Timo Vihavainen and Elena Bogdanova (eds.), ‘About This Book’, in: Communism and Consumerism, pp. xi, xviii.

  22. 22.

    Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Happiness (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 71. On this theme see, for example, Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989); and Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real–and–Imagined Spaces (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

  23. 23.

    George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (London: Sage, 2019).

  24. 24.

    Vance Packard, The Waste Makers (London: Longmans, 1961), p. 69.

  25. 25.

    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 230.

  26. 26.

    Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things, p. 163.

  27. 27.

    Paul L. Wachtel, ‘Alternatives to the Consumer Society’, in: David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (eds.), Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life, Justice, and Global Stewardship (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), p. 199.

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  1. University of London, London, UK

    Gregory Claeys

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  1. Gregory Claeys
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  1. Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marcello Musto

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Claeys, G. (2021). Marx and Environmental Catastrophe. In: Musto, M. (eds) Rethinking Alternatives with Marx. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81764-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81764-0_6

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