In the discussion on Gabriel Rockhill's conspiracy theory book about Western Marxism, I mentioned John Bellamy Foster's metabolic rift theory ( https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39972 ) and my view that it isn't entirely his theory but has been better articulated by Paul Burkett.
In part, my view arises out of a brief Q & A from a 2018 lecture by Foster in Vancouver. At 1:03:51 ( https://youtu.be/VfoWxyZWuKE?si=Yd5m6LNMup2mKPzn&t=3831 ) , I asked Foster about Burkett's labour power as a common-pool resource. His answer at 1:10:51 ( https://youtu.be/VfoWxyZWuKE?si=6bittb6YwUIlfE0p&t=4251 ) veered away from my specific question about Paul Burkett and labour power into a digression on Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" after remarking, "I wouldn't have probably used the word common pool resource but yeah that's I think that's correct." I was hoping to get an elaboration from Foster on Burkett's argument, which in fact is right at the core of the so-called metabolic rift and his answer indicated to me that he was not familiar with Burkett's discussion and possibly not with Ostrom's work either. It is revealing to read Burkett's 1995 paper, "Capitalization verses socialization of nature," in which he positively criticizes Foster's 1994 book. In a couple of places, Burkett was subtle but unsparing about the defects in Foster's 'exposition': > > John Bellamy Foster's book is of considerable interest precisely because > it demonstrates the class character of the ecological crisis and of > environmental struggles in and through a totalizing framework which is > flexible, conceptually straightforward, and (most important) quite > readable. As a matter of fact, I find the book's framework to be of > greater strategic-pedagogical significance than Foster's exposition > indicates. > ... > > What emerges — and I think Foster's exposition could have made this more > explicit — is a dynamic view of each capitalist stage as an organic whole > whose internal socio-economic and ecological contradictions and conflicts > condition subsequent stages of the global people-nature metabolism and > corresponding struggles. > To Foster's credit, as I mentioned previously, he took Burkett's critique to heart. But I don't believe he ever understood "his" theory as well as Burkett did. And I don't think he really appreciated the significance of Burkett's labour power as a common pool resource to the theory of metabolic rift. In Burkett's Marx and Nature (1999), he wrote of the parallel that Marx noted between "capital’s depletion of the natural force of labor power by extension of work-time beyond the limits of human recuperative abilities, and capital’s overstretching of the regenerative powers of the land by its plunder of extra-human natural forces. ...Capital’s plunderings of labor power and extra-human nature both involve the extraction of short-run gains at the expense of long-run sustainability..." "From the standpoint of the reproduction and development of society," he wrote, "labor power is a common pool resource—one with definite (albeit elastic) natural limits." He then went on to argue that Marx analyzed the "capitalist threat to the reproduction of human beings in just such terms [of the theft of a common pool resource]." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39974): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39974 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117002068/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
