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Energy, Ecology and Economics

Howard T. Odum was an American ecologist recognized for his pioneering contribution to the study of ecosystems and his integrated approach to ecology, economics and energy. A leading figure in the emergence of ecological economics, we invite here to read his short classic text “Energy, Ecology and Economics”, which, written significantly during the 1973 oil…

Howard T. Odum
Marxism and Natural Limits

Ted Benton is a sociologist with a broad engagement with philosophical and natural science issues. His work has been linked to the “critical realism” group, and early on he developed a number of key contributions to the encounter between ecology and Marxist socialism. To this end, in his essay “Marxism and Natural Limits”, he exposed…

Ted Benton
A Marxist Precursor of Energy Economics: Podolinsky / Responses

Since its origin, various approaches to ecological economics have emphasized its emphasis on natural limits in confrontation with neoclassical economics, but also in critical dialogue with Marxist economics. According to these positions, the theoretical analysis of Marxist economics, centered on exchange value, would have marginalized biophysical issues in the field of economic production. In a…

Joan Martínez AlierJosé Manuel Naredo
Tradición marxista y nuevos problemas

Manuel Sacristán, possibly the most outstanding Spanish Marxist thinker of the second half of the 20th century, was also a pioneer in the introduction of ecomarxism. His extensive and very diverse contribution to Marxist thought was accompanied by an inexhaustible work of translation of fundamental authors of the school, in addition to a committed political…

Manuel Sacristán
Ecological Economics, Marxism, and Technological Progress: Some Explorations of the Conceptual Foundations of Theories of Ecologically Unequal Exchange

Professor of human ecology at Lund University, a leading center in this field of study, the Swedish cultural anthropologist Alf Hornborg has contributed some of the most outstanding works on technology in relation to the appropriation of labor and territory from the frameworks of world-systems analysis and unequal exchange between North and South. Among many…

Alf Hornborg
Who Lit this Fire? Approaching the History of the Fossil Economy

Andreas Malm, professor of human ecology at Lund University, is one of the leading figures of the latest generation of ecomarxists, with pioneering contributions to the historiography on the link between global warming and the development of fossil capitalism. His book Fossil Capital is a key study on the subject. As an introduction to his…

Andreas Malm
La economía en evolución: Invento y configuración de la economía en los siglos XVIII y XIX y sus consecuencias actuales

A leading figure in ecological economics, José Manuel Naredo has written, among other outstanding works, La economía en evolución, a voluminous and erudite work on the development of economic thought, the origin of ecosocial decline and the possibilities of overcoming this degradation. The article we propose to read, with the same title as his book,…

José Manuel Naredo
The Value of Everything? Work, Capital and Historical Nature in the Capitalist World-Ecology / Responses

Environmental historian and geographer Jason W. Moore gained notoriety, beyond his abundant academic work, with the publication in 2015 of Capitalism in the Web of Life, whose impact in turn aroused not a few responses. Before publishing his book, different articles anticipated some of the central theses contained in it. Among others, we propose the…

Jason W. Moore
The Scientific Revolution and ‘The Death of Nature’

Carolyn Merchant is a philosopher and historian of environment and science. Her book The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution is one of the most influential works of radical ecological thought, a pioneering work of ecofeminism. In it, Merchant exposes how the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, which accompanied the emergence…

Carolyn Merchant
Ecology and Freedom

André Gorz was a pioneering ecomarxist author. His thought was linked from a young age to existentialist and humanist Marxism, whose interest in labor studies led him to develop some of the earliest contributions to political ecology within the Marxist field. We propose the reading of Ecology and Freedom as one of the foundational texts of…

André Gorz
The Second Contradiction of Capitalism

James O’Connor was an economist and sociologist, co-founder and editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism, the most influential ecosocialist academic journal. O’Connor, a great communicator of ecomarxist thought, is known for his theoretical contribution regarding the “second contradiction of capitalism”. The first contradiction being that which refers to how the rate of exploitation of capital produces…

James O’Connor
From Feminism to Ecology

Ariel Salleh is a sociologist and political scientist whose work focuses on issues of ecology and feminism. Linked to the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism, her extensive work is an enriching display of the active dialogue between ecofeminism and Marxist ecosocialism. With a particular critical emphasis on ecological politics, regarding the relationship between humanity and nature,…

Ariel Salleh
Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift

John Bellamy Foster is possibly the best known and most influential author of what has been called the “second ecosocialist generation”, which would have started with the publication of his Marx’s Ecology (2000) and Paul Burkett’s Marx and Nature (1999), outstanding works in the positive recovery of the legacy of Marx and Engels at the…

John Bellamy Foster
Gentrification and Uneven Development

Neil Smith was a leading Marxist geographer in the study of the production of urban space. His work on uneven development and gentrification has contributed to the critique of capital as an agent of spatial reconfiguration (or “second nature”), and should be read in dialogue with the work of Henri Lefebvre and the work of…

Neil Smith