Paul Burkett

Over a decade ago Foster and Burkett introduced a revolutionary understanding of the ecological foundations of Marx's thought, demonstrating that Marx's concepts of the universal metabolism of nature, social metabolism, and metabolic rift prefigured much of modern systems ecology. In this volume, Foster and Burkett expand on this analysis in the process of responding to recent eco-socialist criticisms of Marx.

Under senare år har marxismen berikats med ekologiska tankegods, samtidigt som en bortglömd ekologisk sida hos Marx, Engels och den första generationens marxister har avtäckts. I denna volym publiceras sex av den ekologiska marxismens grundtexter[, skrivna av James O'Connor, Ted Benton, Kate Soper, Paul Burkett, John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark och Richard York]. De sätts även i ett vidare ideologiskt och politiskt sammanhang i en utförlig introduktion. ”Samtidigt som den ekologiska marxismen delar den radikala miljörörelsens analys av ekonomisk tillväxt som i grunden ohållbar, anser den, till skillnad från exempelvis ekologiska ekonomer, inte att en stillastående eller rent av krympande kapitalistiskt ekonomi är möjlig. Strikt logiskt utmynnar därmed en ekomarxistisk analys i att en hållbar kapitalism är en självmotsägelse.” Ur Rikard Warlenius inledning

Though infrequently viewed as an environmental thinker, Karl Marx insisted that production as a social and material process is shaped and constrained by both historically developed relations among producers and natural conditions. Paul Burkett shows that it is Marx's overriding concern with human emancipation that impels him to approach nature from the standpoint of materialist history, sociology and critical political economy.

This book undertakes the first general assessment of ecological economics from a Marxist point of view, and shows how Marxist political economy can make a substantial contribution to ecological economics. The analysis is developed in terms of nature and economic value, the treatment of nature as capital, the significance of the entropy law for economic systems and the concept of sustainable development. A foundation is constructed for a substantive dialogue between Marxists and ecological economists.

China is the fastest-growing economy in the world today. For many on the left, the Chinese economy seems to provide an alternative model of development to that of neoliberal globalization. Although it is a disputed question whether the Chinese economy can be still described as socialist, there is no doubting the importance for the global project of socialism of accurately interpreting and soberly assessing its real prospects.China and Socialism argues that market reforms in China are leading inexorably toward a capitalist and foreign-dominated development path, with enormous social and politcal costs, both domestically and internationally. The rapid economic growth that accompanied these market reforms have not been due to efficiency gains, but rather to deliberate erosion of the infrastructure that made possible a remarkable degree of equality. The transition to the market has been based on rising unemployment, intensified exploitation, declining health and education services, exploding government debt, and unstable prices. At the same time, China's economic transformation has intensified the contradictions of capitalist development in other countries, especially in East Asia. Far from being a model that is replicable in other Third World countries, China today is a reminder of the need for socialism to be built from the grassroots up, through class struggle and international solidarity.