JBF has a new book, Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique, in which he defends 2nd generation eco-socialists from the persistent attacks and mis-conceptions of 1st generation eco-socialists.
The summary of Marxist Ecology and its insights are excellently outlined in the following interview
INTERVIEW: JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER Marx and the Earth: Why we wrote an ‘anti-critique’
You write that there is a “complex materialist ecology at the root of classical Marxism.” What are the basic and most important insights of Marx and Engels regarding the destruction of nature in capitalism?JBF: This is difficult to answer. The principal discoveries have to do with Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, his ecological-value analysis, the analysis of ecological imperialism, and Marx and Engels’s development of the dialectics of ecology. Most important from the standpoint of praxis is Marx’s extraordinarily radical definition of sustainability, in which he said no one owns the earth, rather people must maintain it for future generations as good heads of the household. Socialism, for Marx, was defined in Capital, vol. 3 in terms of the rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolism between human beings and nature, along with the full development of human potential. Marx adopted the concept of metabolism from the natural science of his day, thereby developing an ecological systems analysis that anticipated today’s systems ecology. Marx’s metabolism argument took the form of a dialectical mediation between the labor and production process looked at from an ecological standpoint, and natural processes as a whole. Capitalism’s alienated “social metabolism” manifested itself as an “irreparable rift” in the human relation to nature through production under capitalism. Marx’s ecological value-form theory argued that value production under capitalism undermined the natural-material/use value components of wealth, generating contradictions not only in relation to labor, but also in relation to nature. Marx’s overall ecological-value analysis reveals the contradictions inherent in this, embedded in capitalism’s treatment of nature as “a free gift for capital.”
Looks very good.