There is a recurring mention of the current nature of certain Marxist theories in the light of the precarious environmental conditions of the earth

At a time when the suffering of the environment and the diminishing balance between the elements of nature, as we have always known them, are putting man in difficulty and his survival, we are starting to talk about social ecology again.

In this period and in the recent past, because of the compromised environmental situation, the growth of the economic inequalities that create more and more poor and ecological migrants and consumerism taken to the extreme, in which the goods are perhaps worth more than the work of man, the return to reading of classical philosophy and great thinkers, such as Platone, Gandhi and Karl Marx have made us find precise references to the relationship between man and nature.

Marx begins to speak of this, drawing on a precise situation that occurred between 1830 and 1870, a period in which both In Europe and North America there was a widespread loss of fertility in cultivated soils.

To underline the seriousness of the situation is the fact that from 1835 the first ships of wheat began to arrive in England to rescue the sick European agriculture, arriving to import in 1847 as many as 220,000 tons.

The alarm created by this situation does not escape a shrewd observer like Marx, who develops a theory on the capitalist exploitation of agriculture, based on the impoverishment of soils without worrying about their regeneration and their productive balance against future generations.

Citing a passage from the chapter “Genesis of the capitalist land annuity” that is part of the third book of the Capital Marx says:

"Large land ownership reduces the agricultural population to a minimum, at an continuously decreasing percentage, and contrasts it with an industrial population that is constantly growing and concentrated in large cities; in this way creates conditions that cause an unbridgeable fracture in the complex balance of social metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life.

It thus creates the conditions that cause the waste of soil energy, a waste that trade transfers far beyond the borders of the country considered. Large industry and large industrial agriculture are acting in the same direction.

Originally they are distinguished because the industry devastates and spoils above all the workforce and therefore the natural strength of the human being, while agriculture more directly ruins the natural strength of the earth, but then, as it develops, they end up giving way: the industrial system in the countryside ends up debilitating workers too, and industry and commerce, for their part, provide agriculture with the means to exploit the land.”

Marx also mentions the lack of circularity of the economy,comparing the low fertility of the countryside with the poisoning of rivers perpetrated in the big cities. In fact, he writes:

“In London, for example, manure produced by four and a half million people was not better to do than to use it to poison the Thames at a huge cost.”

‘The residues from the natural physiological processes of human beings could, like those of industrial production and consumption, be reintroduced into the production cycle, closing the metabolic cycle.’

Marx speaks several times about a new relationship between nature and man,where agriculture could not undergo an industrial and capitalist approach based on immediate profit, so as to debilitate the land without worrying about creating a proper harmony with it.

In his writings we find a quote about:

“The fact that, for the cultivation of the different soil products, the fluctuations in market prices, which lead to a continuous change in those crops, and the very spirit of capitalist production, centered on the most immediate profit, are at odds with agriculture, which must manage production taking into account the whole of the permanent living conditions of the human generations that follow.”

The modern aspect of sustainability is often found when Marx stresses that the earth cannot belong to the contemporary man who allows himself to make intensive exploitation for his benefit, but must think of future generations.

This aspect is discussed below: “A development that responds to the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.”

For Marx, it is necessary for the earth to be “treated consciously and rationally as a perpetual property of the community, an inalienable condition of existence and reproduction of the series of successive generations.”

Although Marx has received sustained criticism who argued his disinterest in the value of nature, himself repeatedly expressed the concept that true wealth consists of the values of use, which characterize production in general, beyond its capitalist form, therefore nature, which contributes to the production of values of use, is as much a source of wealth as work.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.