Organic Marxism

This revolutionary book fuses the enduring legacy of socialism-government for the common good-with the best of the environmental movement and the newest insights from sustainability studies. The result is a manifesto in the tradition of Bill McKibben's Eaarth-a roadmap forward in the face of the growing environmental catastrophe, which is the most complex crisis humanity has ever faced. Catherine Keller writes, "What an unexpected, discomforting and important work! If Marxism seemed to be abandoned in the West to a few academic leftists and nostalgic activists, the authors bring it roaring back into relevance." American conservatives like to say that Marxism was destroyed by its opponents and by the mistakes of Marxist governments. Organic Marxism provides the definitive answer to this charge. New economic evidence reveals that Marx's predictions are coming true in ways once thought impossible. Today the wealthiest class, the richest 1%, possesses more wealth and power than ever before, whereas the 99% are slipping economically, and the majority of humans live in increasing poverty. Above all else, the global environmental crisis changes everything. Clayton and Heinzekehr show how, over the last decades, rich individuals and multinational corporations have acted selfishly to increase their own wealth-with devastating ecological consequences. The data make it clear that the planet has reached the limits of its capacity. The authors trace the unimaginable environmental and social consequences that (scientists tell us) global warming will bring: mass extinctions, food and water shortages, violent weather, rising oceans. Why then do our governments continue to favor the wealthy? Why do they take no action ... or actually worsen the situation? Organic Marxism shows why the situation is not hopeless, however. The vast majority of humans favor sustainable systems and lifestyles. With this growing support, it's possible to begin laying the foundations for a new, ecological civilization on this planet. In these pages Clayton and Heinzekehr lay out the steps toward a fair and sustainable society, one run not in the interests of the rich but for the common good. This "fresh, energetic, and revolutionary manifesto" (Santiago Slabodsky) takes its leads from the core insights of Karl Marx, from process philosophers in China (Taoism) and in the West (Alfred North Whitehead), from ecology, and from the organic practices of sustainable communities. This "postmodern Marxism," the authors argue, is not deterministic and utopian. It allows for market forces while limiting corruption and excessive profit-taking by the wealthy. In the end, localized systems of production and trade, steeped in the cultural traditions of a given people, are far more sustainable and life-affirming than a globalized economy run by the richest banks and multinational corporations. The book is a call to action. We can no longer sit by passively and allow unlimited consumption by the wealthy when it means that there will be nothing left for our grandchildren. Without a planetary crisis, the rich would remain in power. As we approach the planet's limits, however, there is no other option but to shift to an organic, ecological civilization. Clayton and Heinzekehr show how scientists and economists, farmers and small business people, artists and religious leaders are coming together around the globe, building communities for the common good.

This revolutionary book fuses the enduring legacy of socialism--government for the common good--with the best of the environmental movement and the newest insights from sustainability studies. The result is a manifesto--a roadmap forward in the face of the growing environmental catastrophe, which is the most complex crisis humanity has ever faced. American conservatives like to say that Marxism was destroyed by its opponents and by the mistakes of Marxist governments. Organic Marxism provides the definitive answer to this charge. As we approach the planet's limits, however, there is no other option but to shift to an organic, ecological civilization. Clayton and Heinzekehr show how scientists and economists, farmers and small business people, artists and religious leaders are coming together around the globe, building communities for the common good.

This "essay on capitalism, socialism, and revolution" offers a councilist critique of orthodox Marxism and offers, in the place of Marxism, a new view of socialist revolution consistent with modern circumstances.

Connects the Marxist construct of capitalism to systems of community In this book, Michael Lebowitz deepens the arguments he made in his award-winning, Beyond Capital. Karl Marx, in Capital, focused on capital and the capitalist class that is its embodiment. It is the endless accumulation of capital, its causes and consequences that are central to Marx’s analysis. In taking this approach, Marx tended to obscure not only the centrality of capital’s “immanent drive” and “constant tendency” to divide the working class but also the political economy of the working class (“social production controlled by social foresight”). In Between Capitalism and Community, Lebowitz demonstrates that capitalism contains within itself elements of a different society, one of community. Whereas Marx’s intellectual construct of capitalism treats it as an organic system that reproduces its premises of capital and wage-labor (including a working class that looks upon the requirements of capital “as self-evident natural laws”), Lebowitz argues that the struggle of workers in common and activities based upon solidarity point in the direction of the organic system of community, an alternative system that produces its own premises, communality, and recognition of the needs of others. If we are to escape the ultimate barbarism portended by the existing crisis of the earth system, the subordination of the system of capitalism by that of community is essential. Since the interregnum in which capitalism and community coexist is marked by the interpenetration and mutual deformation of both sides within this whole, however, the path to community cannot emerge spontaneously but requires a revolutionary party that stresses the development of the capacities of people through their protagonism.

Marx's theory of history is often regarded as the most enduring and fruitful aspect of his intellectual legacy. His "historical materialism" has been the inspiration for some of the best historical writing in the works of scholars such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P.Thompson, Rodney Hilton and Robert Brenner. S.H. Rigby establishes Marx's claims about social structure and historical change, discusses their use in his own and his followers' writings, and assesses the validity of his theories. He argues that Marx's social theories were profoundly contradictory and that Marxism has proved most useful when it is seen as a source of questions, concepts and hypotheses rather than as a philosophy of historical development.

In Marx and the Earth John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett respond to recent ecosocialist criticisms of Marx, offering a full-fledged anti-critique. They thus extend their earlier pioneering work on Marx’s ecology, providing the basis for a new red-green synthesis.

This volume offers the essential theoretical thought of the Austro-Marxist thinkers Otto Bauer, Max Adler, Karl Renner, Friedrich Adler, Rudolf Hilferding, and Otto Neurath over the span of their Austrian Social-Democratic careers, from the decades before World War I until the mid-1930s.

It was Philippe van Parijs' conviction that the Marxist tradition can be kept alive as an essential political component of the Left not through dutiful conservation, but through ruthless recycling: the discarding of encumbering elements, and the reshaping of the remainder using the latest intellectual 'technology'. The essays collected in this book examine the structure and potential of historical materialism as a general theory of social change. They draw on the lessons of the failure of Marxist crisis theory, and show how a rejuvenated notion of exploitation can illuminate the analysis of the class structure of welfare state capitalism or the assessment of international migration. They explore and advocate a 'capitalist road to communism' that expands the realm of freedom while bypassing socialism, and they develop those aspects of the Marxist project consistent with ecological concerns.