Marx's critical discourse for thinking about environmental devastation: a perspective beyond the hegemonic imaginaries of sustainability

Abstract

The historical development of contemporary capitalism has produced an environmental crisis of global dimensions. The predominance of capitalist technology of a noxious nature determines the deployment of the productive forces of capital that overexploit and pollute nature in ways never seen before. In this context, the present study set out to advance towards the reconstruction of the ecological vein of Marxism based on Marx's critical discourse, distancing itself both from the hegemonic imaginary of sustainability and from the dominant positions within eco-Marxism. An exploratory analysis of documents was followed to be able to present the arguments that both conventional economics and environmental economics deploy trying to explain contemporary environmental devastation and, later, from this impotent criticism and prey to the logic of the market and of value as a social form, it goes on to structure the hegemonic imaginaries of sustainability. In this sense, the present study managed to argue about the need for the critical and scientific discourse of Karl Marx to think about environmental devastation and the objective conditions of the possibility of an ecological capitalism; as well as it was possible to address the ecological and political-libertarian dimension of Marx's thought and the task of developing it to break with the hegemonic views of sustainability and overcome the series of distortions and inaccuracies that have been made from outside and within Marxism before a alleged anti-ecological gaze of Marx. The study concluded that although the fight for the environment has become urgent, this front does not replace that of the class struggle; In other words, the contradiction between capital and nature does not subordinate the contradiction between capital and labor, but, on the contrary, it actualizes it. Therefore, the validity of Marx's critical discourse is essential, in its genesis and development, to be able to carry out an ecological critique of the economy and politics of contemporary capitalism.