Critical realism and the ontology of Eco-Marxism between emergence and hybrid monism

ABSTRACT

Eco-Marxism presents a debate between two theoretical schools: metabolic rift theory, developed by John Foster and others, and world-ecology, proposed by Jason W. Moore. The debate refers ultimately to ontology, more precisely to the relation between society and nature. Critical realism plays a central role as the philosophical underlabouring for metabolic rift theory and has implications regarding the Anthropocene/Capitalocene debate as well. Reviewing the debate through CR categories provides clarity about the specifically social character of the causes of ecological disruptions. Using CR, metabolic rift theorists could explain the interdisciplinary character of their analyses. By distinguishing between real transfactual mechanisms and their actual interaction in open systems, I intend to show that neither metabolic rift theory, nor its interdisciplinary approach to the Anthropocene, involve Cartesian Dualism, as Moore claims. World-Ecology provides an alternative historical account of capitalism's environmental history, but it does not critically replace metabolic rift theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Eco-Marxism
• anthropocene
• ontology
• emergence
• monism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All quotes from originals in Spanish have been translated by the author.

2 The Anthropocene notion has also raised important questioning from critics of WE. Hornborg and Malm, for instance, assert that the Anthropocene concept is ‘analytically flawed, as well as inimical to action’ (2014, 62). According to these authors, the Anthropocene narrative naturalizes climate change by assigning it, ultimately, to the biology of our species and not to historically specific, situated and transformable dynamics of power and growth. Thus, it would not be right to simply equate the MRT/WE debate with the Anthropocene/Capitalocene one. After all, Malm, who defends MRT, first proposed the Capitalocene notion.

3 Latin American environmental journalist Roberto Andrés defends a similar position, claiming that the proponents of the Capitalocene equate ‘geology with economics, underestimating the specificities of each’, have Eurocentric biases and cannot adequately specify the meaning of the Capitalocene (2022, 42–46).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CONICET.

Notes on contributors

Facundo Nahuel Martín

Facundo Nahuel Martín has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires. He works as a full-time researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina. He is also teaches at the University of Buenos Aires and is assistant professor at the National Pedagogical University of Argentina. He has published the books Marx de vuelta. Hacia una teoría crítica de la modernidad (2014), Pesimismo emancipatorio. Marxismo y psicoanálisis en el pensamiento de T. W. Adorno (2018) and Teoría crítica de la modernidad. Marxismo, movimientos sociales y proyecto emancipatorio (2020). He is the author of several papers on Critical Theory, Marxism and Philosophical Materialism.