Marx e a natureza em O capital (original) (raw)

The investigation on Karl Marx’s concept of nature in "The Capital" requires a historical approach that starts from the magical conception of nature, proceeds through Greek cosmology and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, taking into account also Hegel’s conception of the matter. As for Marx’s work itself, it is desirable focusing firstly on his early writings, in order to accomplish the considerable difference between these and his mature book, due to the strong influence of Feuerbach's Sensualismus on the former. Inside "The Capital" itself there is an important distinction concerning the concept of nature: This is simultaneously the subtract of human activity – work process, insulated from every kind of social form – and the source of forces that humankind employs in its tools and machines in form of technology. The second one is typical of capitalist societies and is, for Marx, one pre-condition to humankind setting itself free from all sorts of domination and exploitation. This statement of Marx is in part responsible for a strong polemic nowadays, in which ecologists blame Marxism of being as destructive to nature as liberal capitalism, because it supports the concept of an infinite development of productive forces as a medium to reach socialism. On the other hand Marxists label ecologists as "romantic" and reactionary. Based on many passages of Marx's work itself, I intend to show in this book, that neither ecologists nor Marxists are completely right.