Karl Marx didn’t say anything specific about climate change yet in many ways predicted it. Living through the rise of the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed the emerging ecological consequences of rapid industrialization. In this context, he believed that the exploitation of nature was the central contradiction of capitalism. While often labeled a “Promethean” thinker, who championed the human conquest of nature, Marx’s writings reveal deep concern for ecological issues. From the analysis of primitive accumulation in Capital to his writings on the concept of “metabolic rift,” Marx was clear: capitalism doesn’t just exploit people – it systematically depletes and destroys nature, pushing the earth ever closer to ecological collapse.
What Did Marx Say About Ecology?
Karl Marx viewed capitalism as born through the violence of so-called “primitive accumulation” – the seizure, enclosure, and commodification of land and expulsion of the incumbent population from it (Harvey, 2005). Writing about the “great masses of men,” historically “torn” from the land and “hurled” into the labor market, Marx (1967) concluded that the ‘expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process’.
Capital came into the world ‘dripping with blood and dirt from head to toe’ (Marx, 1967). Beyond its human toll, Marx also recognized that the environmental consequences of capitalism were disastrous. As capitalism expanded through relentless exploitation, it came to encompass not just human labor but all of nature itself.
The contradiction of capitalist economics was that despite its dependence on natural resources, capitalism operates as if it can transcend the absolute natural limits of nature. Bound by the imperative to ‘explore the earth in all directions’ and ‘discover new, useful qualities in things’ (Marx, 2005), the system creates what Marx described as an “irreparable rift” between the natural world and the social metabolism of capitalism (Saito 2023).
Metabolic Rift
Marx’s concert of “metabolic rift” refers to a fundamental disruption in the relationship between humans and nature caused by capitalist production. Drawing from the natural sciences, Marx (1967) used the term “metabolism” to describe the exchange of energy between human labor and the earth.
Under capitalist conditions, Marx argued that resources are extracted from the earth, possessed, and consumed – breaking the natural cycle and leading to ecological degradation. In pre-capitalist societies, metabolic exchange was localized and natural waste was returned to the land, maintaining an ecologically sustainable balance. Capitalist production has fundamentally disrupted this equilibrium, at the same time severing human societies from more natural conditions of existence.
Capitalism, by its very nature, seeks to transcend all barriers – geographical, technological, and ecological – to expand markets and maximize profit. It accelerates urbanization, distancing people from the natural world, and turns agriculture into a fully commodified industry that relies on artificial fertilizers and intensive farming practices. The relentless expansion of this system has led to a global ecological crisis on an unprecedented scale.
Thus, at the heart of Marx’s ecological critique is a stark warning: capitalism’s systemic need for profit and growth leads to a “rift” that undermines the very ecological foundations upon which human life depends (Saito 2023).
What Can Marx Tell Us About Climate Change?
The general law of capitalist accumulation according to Karl Marx (1967) is the relentless pursuit of “accumulation for accumulation sakes, production for production sakes.” This process is not optional – competition forces capitalists to obey the system’s inherent logic as if an external, coercive law. Marx’s analysis reveals capitalism to be an endlessly expanding system, locked into cycles of investment and reinvestment, incapable of respecting absolute natural limits. At its core, his critique of political economy highlights the capitalist logic of perpetual growth – an imperative that directly conflicts with ecological sustainability.
More than a century after Marx’s death, his early warnings were echoed at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, where 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg denounced the “fairy tales of eternal economic growth” espoused by world leaders. She pointed out that for over thirty years the science had been “crystal clear” yet nothing but “business as usual” was offered up by global elites, as the world faces impending ecological collapse.
In this light, the fundamental lesson of Marx is that climate change is not just a policy failure – but the result of an irreparable rift between capitalism and the natural world.
