Why economics needs to be distinguished from physics, and why economists need to talk to physicists: a response to Foster and Holleman

Abstract

Foster and Holleman argue that the systems ecologist H.T. Odum offered a valid theoretical framework for conceptualizing ecologically unequal exchange, and demonstrate its affinity with the Marxian theory of unequal exchange of embodied labour. However, both approaches suffer from the same fundamental confusion of the biophysical and the economic. The affinity between labour and energy theories of the unequal exchange of value was demonstrated by S.C. Lonergan already in 1988, but to thus define asymmetric transfers of biophysical resources in terms of underpaid ‘use values’ is misleading. Foster's recent endorsement of Odum is inconsistent with his earlier rejection of Odum's intellectual ancestor S. Podolinsky. While the ambition to ecologize Marx is laudable, it is in the interests of correct historiography and contemporary environmental justice activism to untangle some of the analytical problems in Foster and Holleman's article. A major problem is their failure to acknowledge the implications of N. Georgescu-Roegen's conceptualization of the relation between economics and thermodynamics.

Keywords:

• ecologically unequal exchange
• ecological economics
• Marxism

Notes

¹Emmanuel (1972) applied the Marxian notion of labour value to international trade, arguing that the values embodied in exports from low-wage countries are underpaid in relation to those from high-wage countries, a pattern which generates asymmetric transfers of surplus value on the world market. Foster and Holleman (2014, 29) similarly define ecologically unequal exchange as ‘the disproportionate and undercompensated transfer of matter and energy from the periphery to the core’ (emphasis added).

²Foster and Holleman's complete silence on material flow analysis and so-called Physical Trade Balances (e.g., Pérez Rincón 2006) is a major omission.

³The same question, of course, pertains to ’economic’ unequal exchange, i.e., asymmetric transfers of embodied labour: should these unequal transfers of ‘labour value’ be measured in dollars or expended energy? The fact that Emmanuel (1972) and Amin (1976) calculate such flows in dollars (cf. Lonergan 1988, 135) is difficult to reconcile with Foster and Burkett's assertions that, in Marx's view, surplus labour is a transfer of energy to the capitalist (Burkett and Foster 2006, 120, 126; Foster and Burkett 2008, 26).

⁴This consideration appeared particularly relevant at the time of writing this response, a few days before hosting an international workshop on Ecologically Unequal Exchange and Ecological Debt (at Lund University, 27–28 March 2014) with the explicit aim of exploring means of collaboration between environmental justice activists and academics.

⁵Costanza's name is misspelled 26 times in the article.

⁶For example, Odum (1996, 230–6) has deliberated on the extent to which higher-wage professions requiring substantial education (and even the development of human culture!) represent more ‘emergy’ per individual. Such suggestions clearly aim to explain wage differences in terms of an energy theory of value. This is difficult to reconcile with Marxian class analysis.

⁷Foster and Holleman misleadingly phrase this observation as the conclusion that ‘the more money attached to a product the less available energy was associated with it’, which misses the main point. For the full argument, they could have consulted my 1992 article on the ‘thermodynamics of imperialism’ (Hornborg 1992).

⁸Quite contrary to my own conclusions (Hornborg 2014), Foster and Holleman (2014, 25–6, n. 26) suggest that Odum represents a more radical approach to ecological economics than, e.g., Herman Daly. Daly's (1996) critique of neoclassical economics is aligned with that of his mentor Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971), whose reconceptualization of economics must be considered cataclysmic. However, Foster and Holleman demonstrate no understanding of the radical implications of Georgescu-Roegen's and Daly's perspectives.

⁹If ‘Howard Odum studied Marx's political economy very closely’, it seems remarkable that he was not aware of Marx's theory of metabolic rift (Foster and Holleman 2014, 13, n. 13). This should have suggested to Foster and Holleman that the significance of the latter theory for Marx's understanding of capitalism has been overstated.

Additional information

Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of The power of the machine (2001) and Global ecology and unequal exchange (2011) and lead editor of The world system and the Earth system (2006), Rethinking environmental history (2007), International trade and environmental justice (2010) and Ecology and power (2012)