Marxism and the environment Massimo Scalia reading the article published on March 13th '11, entitled "Consumption and waste of resources, the limits of Marxist thought" on Liberation came to my mind some important considerations for not going in epistemological confusion naive. First, the concept of nature and man can not be identified with Marx's vision of human nature and contemporary. The vision of human nature is culturally dependent and general systems theory of Von Bertalannfy. This vision has now passed into common sense through science but it is a vision not fully comprehensive and neutral and is not able to explain certain considerations that Marx was on his conscience. When we talk about ecology, economics, politics, human being today we speak in terms of systems. Ecology is a system that contains within it the political, economic and human beings. But this is a vision in which each institution is in a relationship dependent / independent and in which there are no features "inside" the will. This is a mechanistic view of nature. Marx put man at the center because it was a conscious subject, this implies that his alienation is alienation from its natural origin and as such is the alienation of nature. For this reason Hebert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization in 1955 had tried to introduce classes in psychoanalytic of Marxist thought. He had noticed a speech much more problematic: if a worker becomes alienated loses contact with the satisfaction of basic needs and then remain "eternally dissatisfied and seeks induced needs. Trying induced needs a worker becomes alienated and at the same time a perfect consumer thereby increasing the production of waste and unnecessary things. The very nature of being human is the litmus test of environmental issues. Marx instead uses a mechanistic and deterministic view in the analysis of power relations and the economy. Also, when Marx wrote Capital there was not yet established an environmental problem. What he found in his mechanistic analysis system of economic production was the problem of scarcity of resources for a given class and then the fact of the destructive power of production in a capitalist system. And 'the historical context that has not made sure that Marx went to develop the findings ecological environment. But he had already given a warning about human nature that she is the protagonist in his will, with its dialectic of environmental destruction. To read this article of Bonanni 14/03/2011 "In Europe, parameters to measure the pressure on the environment" I could not agree on the fact that measures such as GDP, growth rate, welfare of countries (defined as welfare and not well-being * ) Can not really say anything on the environment because they say nothing human alienation.
The European vision on the environment is a vision in which subjectivity is totally excluded, and we can be satisfied by an analysis of society and environmental issues that do not take human subjectivity in analysis. I agree with Scalia that the origin of Marx's vision of man and nature is belonging to the myth of Prometheus and the Judeo-Christian thought, but I would also say that scientific knowledge is anything but neutral on the question of the subject which is resolved with the usual Cartesian artifice which is also a myth.
* Welfare is being seen as physical facilities (hospitals, reception centers ect ...) that support the person. Well-being is actually the index of psychological well-being of a country is measured by other parameters (eg increase of suicides, stress ect ...)
Francis New Year (coordinator GC Trento)
