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ABSTRACT
The premise of this article is based on an assertion that Engels made in which he stated that “nature works dialectically.” In exploring this extraordinary proposal, it is illuminating to examine Engels’s own in-depth analysis of unfinished chapter he wrote on the “natural conditions” of Ireland. Within, we observe that concrete organic reality is not a solid thing-like entity but a complex matrix of interconnecting processes that form an organic totality. The organic processes of nature, according to Engels and Marx, are dominated by the climatic process, that “life-awakening force” of soil fertility. However, what determines the form of the local weather system (the local manifestation of the climatic process) is how that system interconnects with the other organic processes of nature—geological structures, vegetation and the soil processes. Subsequently, they all form internal moments of that overall climatic process. The existence of a dialectical reality has profound implications for how we can conceptualise that reality and even more critically how we physically relate to and engage with that dialectical reality, especially when we cultivate those fluid and interconnected forces in agricultural production.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Jingyu Gao for her encouragement and constant support for me in getting this article published.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 According to Foster (Citation2020, 16): “[…] Engels’s powerful analysis of the dialectic of society and nature is little known and needs to be recovered […].”
2 Marx suggested that dialectics involved two stages and both linked. The preliminary stage is the method of inquiry and subsequently followed by a method of presentation (Slater Citation2018b).
3 Engels stated this in the following: “The first and most important qualities of matter is motion, not mechanical or mathematical movement, but still more impulse, vital life spirit, tension, […] the throes of matter” (Engels Citation1986, 46; italics in the original).
4 Engels defines metaphysics in the following:
If, however, we adhere one-sidedly to a single standpoint as the absolute one in contrast to the other, or if we arbitrarily jump from one to the other according to the momentary need of our argument, we shall remain entangled in the one-sidedness of metaphysical thinking; the inter-connection escapes us and we become involved in one contradiction after another. (Engels Citation1986, 167)
5 Engels articulates this reification of reality by science:
In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees. (Marx and Engels Citation2010c, 23)
6 Similar to what Engels stated about Marx’s dialectical endeavours: “Compared with your earlier form of presentation, the progress in the sharpness of dialectical exposition is quite striking” (Marx and Engels Citation1987, 382).
7 Engels reiterated this point in his 1885 preface to his Anti-Duhring: “And finally, to me there could be no question of building the laws of dialectics into nature, but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it” (Marx and Engels Citation2010c, 12–13).
8 Marx included the following footnote from J. Massie to highlight these climatic consequences:
There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of necessaries of life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men’s wants increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in, consequently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same nor is it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation further than by the degree of Heat and Cold: from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth [need] more cultivating than in the latter. (Massie Citation1730, 59; italics added)
9 Engels’s chapter entitled “Natural Conditions” of his unfinished work—“History of Ireland” (Marx and Engels Citation1971).
10 The inner construction of modern society, or, capital in the totality of its relations, is therefore posited in the economic relations of modern landed property, which appears as a process; ground rent–capital–wage labour (the form of the circle can also be put another way: as wage labour–capital–ground rent; but capital must always appear as the active middle) (Marx Citation1973, 276; italics added).
11 Sweeney elaborates on the uniqueness of this physical structure:
Ireland also has its own distinctive geographical climate fingerprint. This results from what is an unusual physical configuration for an island of its size, comprising of a mountainous perimeter of hard ancient rocks and relatively soft, low-lying interior. This combined with the fretted coastline of the west and south provides a surprisingly varied climatic mosaic to the island. (Sweeney Citation2011, 1)
12 Marx quotes Kirchhoff making the same point: “[…] since fertility does not just depend on the quality of the soil, but also on the year’s weather […]” (Kirchhoff Citation1852, 117).
13 A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object, i.e. it is not objectively related. Its being is not objective (Marx and Engels Citation2010a, 337; italics in the original).
14 However, the possible existence of famine conditions also suggests that these weather conditions can have a detrimental effect on the harvest. If we exclude the possibility of the famine conditions caused by human strife, we appear to have a determination of a devastating collapse of a harvest due to natural conditions—a diseased crop such as occurred during either the Great Irish Famine or adverse weather conditions causing dearth. Either way, natural conditions, including climate, play a critical role in crop production.
15 Marx states that: “Agriculture forms a mode of production sui generis, because the organic process is involved in addition to the mechanical and chemical process, and the natural reproduction process is merely controlled and guided […]” (Marx Citation1973, 726).
16 Marx quoted the following:
The number of working days for the three main working periods is assumed to be as follows in the different districts of Germany, with respect to the climatic and other conditions involved: the spring period from mid-March or the beginning of April up to middle of May, 50–60 days; the summer period from early June to late August, 65–80 days; the autumn period from early September or to the end of October or the middle of November, 55–75 days. As far as winter goes, there is simply the work suited to that period, such as haulage of fertilizer, wood, goods for the market, building materials, etc. (Kirchhoff Citation1852, 160)
17 Therefore, in the everyday activities of cultivation human confrontation with nature gives a form to nature’s complex material processes, as the following indicates: “Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials” (Marx Citation1976, 284; italics added). The two essential characteristics of the physical product of the labour are its form and substance in the labour process. The latter is provided by nature and the form by society and “any kind of humanistic form is temporary and accidental compared with natural substances” (Han Citation2010, 27).
18 Engels continued: “After the English invasion, the cultivation of corn diminished because of the continual battles […] If Ireland were not suited to the cultivation of corn, would it have been grown for over a thousand years?” (Marx and Engels Citation1971, 189).
19 Not only is the seedbed raised above the water table, but the trench serves as a drainage channel […] The ridges allow the soil to be warmed from the sides as well as the top and they were, moreover sloped to catch the maximum sun (Evans Citation1992, 40).
20 For a discussion of Marx’s work on colonial Ireland, see Slater (Citation2018b).
21 Engels stated the following in footnote: Goldwin Smith, Irish History and Irish Character, Oxford and London, 1861—What is more amazing in this work, which, under the mask of “objectivity,” justifies English policy in Ireland, the ignorance of the professor of history, or the hypocrisy of the liberal bourgeois? We shall touch on both again later (Marx and Engels Citation1971, 185).
22 A good example of this was identified by Engels:
Mountains and peat bogs certainly reduce the fertile surface considerably. There is little fertile land in the north; yet even here there are highly luxuriant valleys in every county, and Wakefield unexpectedly found a highly fertile tract even in furthest Donegal amongst the wildest mountains. (Marx and Engels Citation1971, 179)
23 It appears that Marx is referring to socialist planning where there will be scientific understanding of the remote consequences of such destructive ecological activity and attempt to avoid it, yet still engage in cultivation.
24 Engels stated that: “the goats in Greece that eat away the young bushes before they grow to maturity, have eaten bare all the mountains of the country” (Engels Citation1986, 175).
25 Rain that falls on a protective tree canopy and their necessary dialectical relationships (interconnections) is able to maintain the integrity of the soil beneath, which in turn sustains the forest growth and its canopy. In removing the forest trees and their essential land-cover function, society drastically realigns the metabolising matrix of the organic interconnecting processes within the Irish weather system.
26 The essential kernel of any organic totality is not a static structure like a “solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing” (Marx Citation1976, 93).
27 Marx stated the same need to work with nature rather than against it: “[…] labour can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter. Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces” (Marx Citation1976, 133).
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Eamonn Slater
Eamonn Slater is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University in Ireland. Over the years he has studied the works of Marx and Engels in general and more recently with a special emphasis on their Irish material, especially concentrated on the ecological aspects of their investigation into the Irish social formation. From this research, he has published articles in History of Political Thought, Capitalism Nature Socialism, and Irish Historical Studies. Recently, he has set up a website in which are a number of his working papers dealing with this subject matter (www.Irishmetabolicrifts.com).