Doug
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[David Harvey, Justice, Nature, & the Geography of Difference, pp. 146-147]
As Grundmann complains, Marx, at times, seems to assume that growth of productive forces implies an increasing power to dominate nature, when "there may be productive forces which do not lead" in that direction "but, rather, to an increasing uncertainty, risk, and uncontrollability as well as to unnecessary oppression in the production process." This does not imply that concern for the natural environment is incompatible with a Promethean view. Indeed, "anthropocentrism and mastery over nature, far from causing ecological problems, are the starting-points from which to address them." Nevertheless, Manes expectation that "science and technology would create an intelligible and controllable world as well as the expectation that only capitalist relations stand in the way" of a rational regulation of our metabolism with nature, have to be questioned. And this implies a challenge to some of the presumptions of historical-geographical materialism.
It is in this context that some Marxists have returned to the ecoscarcity and natural limits argument as being in some sense far more fundamental than Marx (or more importantly Marxists) have been prepared to concede. Unfortunately, the manner of that return by Benton (1989, 1992), Perelman (1993), and O'Connor (1988) often appears as a sad capitulation to capitalistic arguments. Not, of course, that any of them would in any way support the class distinctions that Malthus used (and latterday neo-Malthusians continue to use) to such vicious effect. But the universality of "natural limits" and the deeper appeal to "natural law" as inherently limiting to the capacity to meet human desires, is now increasingly treated as an axiomatic limiting condition of human existence. So what, then, would a dialectical-relational formulation of the problem look like?
Consider, to begin with, a key term like "natural resources." In what sense can we talk about them as being "limited" and in what ways might we reasonably say they are "scarce?" The definition of these key terms is evidently crucial, if only for the whole science of economics which usually defines itself as "the science of the allocation of scarce resources." So let me offer a relational definition of the term "natural resource" as a "cultural, technical and economic appraisal of elements and processes in nature that can be applied to fulfill social objectives and goals through specific material practices." We can unpack the terms in this definition one by one. "Appraisal" refers to a state of knowledge and a capacity to understand and communicate discursively that varies historically and geographically. The long history of capitalism itself shows that technical and economic appraisals can change rapidly and the addition of the cultural dimension makes for even greater fluidity and variability in the definition. Social objectives and goals can vary greatly depending upon who is doing the desiring about what and how human desires get institutionalized, discursively expressed, and politically organized. And the elements and processes in nature change also, not only because change is always occurring (independent of anything human beings do), but because material practices are always transformative activities engaged in by human beings operating in a variety of modes with all sorts of intended and unintended consequences. What exists "in nature" is in a constant state of transformation. To declare a state of ecoscarcity is in effect to say that we have not the will, wit, or capacity to change our state of knowledge, our social goals, cultural modes, and technological mixes, or our form of economy, and that we are powerless to modify either our material practices or "nature" according to human requirements. To say that scarcity resides in nature and that natural limits exist is to ignore how scarcity is socially produced and how "limits" are a social relation within nature (including human society) rather than some externally imposed necessity.