Empire and Ecology: Expropriation of Land, Labor, and Corporeal Life

• In Event: 4342 - Marx, Ecology, and Gender

Abstract

Karl Marx’s critique of political economy has long been understood as centering on the exploitation of labor. However, Marxian scholars, working in such diverse areas as the environment, labor, gender, race, and imperialism, have increasingly illuminated that Marx’s critique finds its underlying material basis or background conditions in the expropriation of land, labor, and corporeal life. Although the concepts of exploitation and expropriation overlap to some extent in Marx’s analysis, they are nonetheless analytically distinct, constituting an essential dialectical relation. The coupling of expropriation and exploitation provides a strong foundation for understanding the historical development of capitalism, and how the imperialism system of capital fostered distinct divisions in society and in relation to nature.

Authors

• John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon

• Brett Clark, University of Utah

• Hannah A. Holleman, Amherst College