PRAXIS AND THEORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MARXISM

Authors

  • Ferdinand D. Dagmang DVK

Keywords:

Ecological Marxism, Metabolic Rift, Metabolism, readmill of Production

Abstract

Ecological Marxism is distinct from the environ-mentalists whose main focus is on the wrongness of anthropocentrism. Even with their diverse approaches, the latter have produced a common portrayal of the autonomy or integrity of nature. Thus, their stress on the debunking of the centrality of human beings eventually emphasized on the gaining of new ways of understanding nature. Ecological Marxism, however, followed Marx’s critique of capitalist production and accumulation. As could be expected, the eco-Marxists will no longer just propose a new way of understanding nature, but also a new praxis in dealing with nature—one that stresses on human development as co-evolving with nature. This environmental praxis which takes a socialist-economics turn, has followed a leftist (Red) course but may also have arrived at the intersection of the Green Movement. Through this, the ecological praxis and theory of Marx and his partner, Engels, has come to the fore.

Author Biography

Ferdinand D. Dagmang, DVK

Dr Ferdinand D. Dagmang is a full professor at De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. He finished his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 1991 with his dissertation: Liberation and Ethics: A Study of the Latin American Liberation Ethics. He has published several articles and monographs on the subjects of ethics, sexuality, popular religion and culture. His book The Predicaments of Intimacy and Solidarity: Capitalism and Impingements has been published by Central Books in 2010. 

References

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The best examples are Arne Næss, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, translated and revised by David Rothenberg, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 and Felix Guattari, “The Three Ecologies,” translated by Chris Turner, New Formations 8 (Summer 1989): 131-147. The concepts of order and chaos, embodied realism, determination, good, etc. are explored and employed by various philosophers “who turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human project” in Bryson Brown, et al., Philosophy of Ecology, Oxford: North Holland, 2011; see also Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000, ix.

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Published

2014-12-29

How to Cite

D. Dagmang, F. . (2014). PRAXIS AND THEORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MARXISM . Journal of Dharma, 39(4), 319–334. Retrieved from https://dvkjournals.in/index.php/jd/article/view/356