The Return of the Dialectics of Nature: The Struggle for Freedom as Necessity


John Bellamy Foster

It is a fundamental premise of Marxism that as material conditions change, so do our ideas about the world in which we live. Today we are seeing a vast transformation in the relations of human society to the natural-physical world of which it is a part, evident in the emergence of what is now referred to as the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history, during which humanity has become the major force in Earth System change. An “anthropogenic rift” in the biogeochemical cycles of the earth,arising from the capitalist system, is now threatening to destroythe earth as a safe home for humanity and for innumerable species that live on it on a timeline not of centuries, but of decades. This necessarily demands a more dialectical conception of the relation of humanity to what Karl Marx called the “universal metabolism of nature.” The point today is not simply to understand the world, but to change it before it is too late.

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