Political Economy: The Strange Logic of Under-pollution

Marxist Lens on Capitalism and Environmental Exploitation

• Political Economy approaches are based on Karl Marx's work and focus on the structures of capitalism as a political and economic order.
• Marx's theoretical position stems from historical materialism, which predicts societal progress through various stages from hunter-gatherers to communism.
• Each stage, except the last, contains the seeds of its own destruction due to inequality, leading to conflicts and crises.
• Stages are distinguished by their unique mode of production, which comprises forces of production and relations of production.
• In capitalist systems, only some people own/control the means and conditions of production, leading to social inequality and accumulation of wealth in a few hands.
• Accumulation and surplus value in capitalism come from rending control of means and conditions of production from workers, leading to underpayment and specific crises.
• The beginnings of modern capitalism started with primitive accumulation, such as the enclosure and privatization of communal resources during the industrial revolution.
• Capitalist accumulation occurs through maximizing surplus value, which leads to overaccumulation and underconsumption, creating economic crises.
• Capitalism also undervalues environmental conditions necessary for its own propagation, leading to environmental degradation and overextraction of resources.
• The system encourages exploitation of natural resources, leading to significant natural destruction and lower quality inputs, including human inputs.
• Capitalism sees nature as external to society, something that can be commodified for human use, which supports environmental exploitation.
• Marx's theories and the Marxist lens provide a critical perspective on the structures and contradictions of capitalism, especially in relation to environmental exploitation.