Cuadernos ecológicos de Marx

Monthlyreview.org / 2016/02/01 / marxs-cuaderno-ecológico /

Por Kohei 1 de febrero de

Saito 2016

Kohei Saito recibió recientemente un doctorado en filosofía de la Universidad Humboldt

de Berlín. En 2015 fue investigador invitado en la Academia de Ciencias de Berlín-
Brandenburgo, donde ayudó a editar los cuadernos de Marx sobre ciencias naturales.
Karl Marx ha sido criticado durante mucho tiempo por su llamado "prometeanismo"
ecológico, un compromiso extremo con el industrialismo, independientemente de los
límites naturales. Este punto de vista, apoyado incluso por varios marxistas, como Ted
Benton y Michael Löwy, se ha vuelto cada vez más difícil de aceptar después de una serie
de análisis cuidadosos y estimulantes de las dimensiones ecológicas del pensamiento de
Marx, elaborado en Monthly Reviewy en otros lugares. El debate del prometismo no es
una mera cuestión filológica, sino muy práctica, ya que el capitalismo afronta crisis
medioambientales a escala global, sin soluciones concretas. Cualquiera de estas soluciones
probablemente vendrá de los diversos movimientos ecológicos que están surgiendo en todo
el mundo, algunos de los cuales cuestionan explícitamente el modo de producción
capitalista. Por tanto, ahora más que nunca, el redescubrimiento de una ecología marxista
es de gran importancia para el desarrollo de nuevas formas de estrategia de izquierda y
lucha contra el capitalismo global.

Sin embargo, no existe un acuerdo inequívoco entre los izquierdistas sobre hasta qué
punto la crítica de Marx puede proporcionar una base teórica para estas nuevas luchas
ecológicas. Los "ecosocialistas de primera etapa", en la categorización de John Bellamy
Foster, como André Gorz, James O'Connor y Alain Lipietz, reconocen las contribuciones de
Marx sobre cuestiones ecológicas hasta cierto punto, pero al mismo tiempo sostienen que
sus análisis del siglo XIX son demasiado incompleta y anticuada para ser de verdadera
relevancia hoy. En contraste, los “ecosocialistas de la segunda etapa”, como Foster y Paul
Burkett, enfatizan el significado metodológico contemporáneo de la crítica ecológica del
capitalismo de Marx, basada en sus teorías del valor y la cosificación. 1

Este artículo tomará un enfoque diferente e investigará los cuadernos científico-naturales

de Marx, especialmente los de 1868, que se publicarán por primera vez en el volumen
cuatro, sección dieciocho del nuevo Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). 2 Como bien
enfatizan Burkett y Foster, los cuadernos de Marx nos permiten ver claramente sus
intereses y preocupaciones antes y después de la publicación del primer volumen de El
capital en 1867, y las direcciones que podría haber tomado a través de su intensa
investigación en disciplinas como la biología, química, geología y mineralogía, muchas de
las cuales no pudo integrar completamente en Capital . 3 Mientras que el gran proyecto de
Capitalquedaría inacabado, en los últimos quince años de su vida Marx llenó una enorme
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cantidad de cuadernos con fragmentos y extractos. De hecho, un tercio de sus cuadernos
datan de este período y casi la mitad de ellos tratan de las ciencias naturales. La intensidad
y el alcance de los estudios científicos de Marx son asombrosos. Por lo tanto, es
simplemente inválido concluir, como lo han hecho algunos críticos, que los poderosos
argumentos ecológicos de Marx en El Capital y otros escritos fueron meros apartes,
mientras se ignora la masa de evidencia contraria que se encuentra en sus últimas
investigaciones científico-naturales.

Al mirar los cuadernos posteriores a 1868, uno puede reconocer inmediatamente la rápida
expansión de los intereses ecológicos de Marx. Argumentaré que la crítica de Marx a la
economía política, de completarse, habría puesto un énfasis mucho más fuerte en la
alteración de la "interacción metabólica" ( Stoffwechsel ) entre la humanidad y la
naturaleza como la contradicción fundamental dentro del capitalismo. Además, la
profundización de los intereses ecológicos de Marx sirve para complicar la crítica de Liebig
al moderno "sistema de robos", que discuto más adelante. La centralidad de la ecología en
los últimos escritos de Marx siguió siendo difícil de discernir durante mucho tiempo
porque nunca pudo completar su obra magna . Los cuadernos recién publicados prometen
ayudarnos a comprender estos aspectos ocultos pero vitales del proyecto de toda la vida de
Marx.

Marx and Liebig in Different Editions of Capital

It is by now a well-known fact that Marx’s critique of the irrationality of modern
agriculture in Capital is deeply informed by Justus von Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry
and James F. W. Johnston’s Notes on North America, works which argue that neglect of
the natural laws of soils inevitably leads to their exhaustion.4 After intensive study of these
books in 1865–66, Marx integrated Liebig’s central ideas into volume one of Capital. In a
section called “Modern Industry and Agriculture,” Marx wrote that the capitalist mode of
production

collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve
an ever-growing preponderance…. [It] disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and
the earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in
the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition
for the lasting fertility of the soil. Thus it destroys at the same time the physical health of the
urban worker, and the intellectual life of the rural worker.5

This justly famous passage has become the cornerstone of recent “metabolic rift”
analyses.6 In a footnote to this section, Marx openly expresses his debt to the seventh
edition of Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry, published in 1862: “To have developed from the
point of view of natural science the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture, is
one of Liebig’s immortal merits.” Such remarks are the reason the “metabolic rift”
approach has focused on Liebig’s critique of modern agriculture as an intellectual source
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for Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism.

However, it is hardly known that in the first German edition of Capital (1867), which is
unfortunately not available in English, Marx went on to state that Liebig’s “brief comments
on the history of agriculture, although not free from gross errors, contain more flashes of
insight than all the works of modern political economists put together [mehr Lichtblicke
als die Schriften sämmtlicher modernen politischen Oekonomen zusammengenommen].”7
A careful reader may immediately notice a difference between this version and later
editions, although it was pointed out only recently by a German MEGA editor, Carl-Erich
Vollgraf.8 Marx modified this sentence in the second edition of Capital published in 1872–
73. Consequently, we usually only read: “His brief comments…although not free from gross
errors, contain flashes of insight.”9 Marx has deleted the statement that Liebig was more
insightful “than all the works of modern political economists put together.” Why did Marx
soften his endorsement of Liebig’s contributions relative to classical political economy?

One might argue that this elimination is only a trivial change, meant to clarify Liebig’s
original contributions in the field of agricultural chemistry and separate them from
political economy, where the great chemist made some “gross errors.” Also Marx, as these
pages show, was very enthusiastic about one particular political economist’s understanding
of the soil problem, namely James Anderson, who, unlike other classical political
economists, examined issues of the destruction of the soil. It was Liebig’s own recognition
of “the destructive side of modern agriculture,” which Marx characterized as “one of
Liebig’s immortal merits.” Hence, Marx might have thought that his expression in the first
edition of Capital was rather exaggerated.

Nonetheless, it should also be noted that Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry was eagerly
discussed by a number of political economists at the time, precisely because of his alleged
contributions to political economy, especially ground-rent theory and population theory.10
For example, the German economist Wilhelm Roscher recognized the relevance of Liebig’s
mineral theory to political economy even before Marx, and added some passages and notes
dedicated to Liebig in his fourth edition of National Economy of Agriculture and the
Related Branches of Natural Production [Nationalökonomie des Ackerbaues und der
verwandten Urproductionen] (1865), in order to integrate Liebig’s new agricultural
findings into his own system of political economy. Notably, Roscher praises Liebig in
similar terms: “Even if many of Liebig’s historical assertions are highly disputable…even if
he misses some important facts of national economy, the name of this great natural
scientist will always maintain a place of honor comparable to the name of Alexander
Humboldt in the history of national economy as well.”11 In fact, it is very likely that
Roscher’s book prompted Marx to reread Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry in 1865–66.
Both authors’ similar remarks reflect a widespread opinion about Liebig’s Agricultural
Chemistry at the time.

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Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that Marx in the first edition of Capital was
intentionally comparing Liebig to those political economists who postulated a trans-
historical and linear development of agriculture, whether from more productive to less
productive soils (Malthus, Ricardo, and J. S. Mill), or from less productive to more
productive (Carey and later Dühring). Liebig’s critique of the “robbery system” of
cultivation instead denounces precisely the modern form of agriculture and its decreasing
productivity as a result of the irrational and destructive use of the soil. In other words,
Liebig’s historicization of modern agriculture provides Marx with a useful natural scientific
basis for rejecting abstract and linear treatments of agricultural development.

Yet as seen earlier, Marx somewhat relativizes Liebig’s contribution to political economy
between 1867 and 1872–73. Could it be that Marx had doubts about Liebig’s chemistry as
well as his economic errors? In this context, close study of Marx’s letters and notebooks
helps us comprehend the larger aims and methods of his research after 1868.

Debates on Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry

Looking at the letters and notebooks from this period, it seems more probable that the
change regarding Liebig’s contribution in the second edition represented more than a mere
correction. Marx was well aware of the heated debates surrounding Liebig’s Agricultural
Chemistry, so after the publication of the first volume of Capital, he thought it necessary to
follow up on the validity of Liebig’s theory. In a letter to Engels dated January 3, 1868,
Marx asked him to seek some advice from a long-time friend and chemist, Carl
Schorlemmer:

I would like to know from Schorlemmer what is the latest and best book (German) on
agricultural chemistry. Furthermore, what is the present state of the argument between the
mineral-fertilizer people and the nitrogen-fertilizer people? (Since I last looked into the
subject, all sorts of new things have appeared in Germany.) Does he know anything about the
most recent Germans who have written against Liebig’s soil-exhaustion theory? Does he
know about the alluvion theory of Munich agronomist Fraas (Professor at Munich
University)? For the chapter on ground rent I shall have to be aware of the latest state of the
question, at least to some extent.12

Marx’s remarks in this letter clearly indicate his aim at the beginning of 1868 to study
books on agriculture. He is not just looking for the recent literature on agriculture in
general, but pays particular attention to debates and critiques of Liebig’s Agricultural
Chemistry. It is important to note that in the manuscript for volume three of Capital, Marx
uncharacteristically points to the importance of Liebig’s analysis while essentially
indicating that this needs to be filled-in in the future. That is, this was part of the argument
that he was continuing to research—and in such basic areas as “the declining productivity
of the soil” related to discussions of the falling rate of profit.13

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Liebig, often called the “father of organic chemistry,” convincingly demonstrated that the
healthy growth of plants requires both organic and inorganic substances, such as nitrogen,
phosphoric acid, and potassium. He claimed, against dominant theories centered on
humus (an organic component of soil made up of decayed plant and animal matter) or
nitrogen, that all necessary substances must be provided in more than a “minimum
amount,” a proposition known as Liebig’s “law of the minimum.”14 Although Liebig’s
insight into the role of inorganic substances remains valid today, two theses derived from
it, the theories of mineral fertilization and of soil exhaustion, sparked immediate
controversy.

According to Liebig, the amount of inorganic substances in soils remains limited without
constant replenishment. It is thus necessary regularly to return to the soil those inorganic
substances that plants have absorbed if one is to grow crops sustainably. (These can be
returned in either inorganic forms or organic forms, which are converted [mineralized]
into inorganic forms.) Liebig calls this necessity the “law of replacement,” and holds that
the full replacement of inorganic substances is the fundamental principle of sustainable
agriculture. Since nature alone could not provide enough inorganic material when such a
large quantity of nutrients was being removed annually, Liebig argued for the use of
chemical mineral fertilizer. He maintained that not only the humus theory of Albrecht
Daniel Thaer’s Principles of Practical Agriculture, but also the nitrogen theory of John
Bennett Lawes and Joseph Henry Gilbert were seriously flawed, because they gave no
attention to the limited quantity of available inorganic substances in soil.

Based on his theory, Liebig warned that violations of the law of replacement and
consequent soil exhaustion threatened the whole of European civilization. According to
Liebig, modern industrialization created a new division of labor between town and
countryside, so that foods consumed by the working class in large cities no longer return to
and restore the original soils, but instead flow out into the river through water toilets
without any further use. In addition, through the commodification of agricultural products
and fertilizer (bone and straw), the aim of agriculture diverges from sustainability and
becomes the mere maximization of profits, squeezing soil nutrients into crops in the
shortest possible period. Disturbed by these facts, Liebig denounced modern agriculture as
a “robbery system,” and warned that the disruption of the natural metabolic interaction
would ultimately cause the decay of civilization. Shifting from his rather optimistic belief in
the early to mid-1850s in the cure-all of chemical fertilization, Liebig’s 1862 edition of
Agricultural Chemistry, especially its new introduction, emphasized the destructive
aspects of modern agriculture much more fervently.

As Liebig strengthened his critique of this robbery system in 1862 and corrected his earlier
optimism, Marx understandably felt a need to review the debate on soil fertility from a new
perspective. At the same time, Liebig’s critique of the robbery system and soil exhaustion

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inspired a number of new arguments among scholars and agronomists. Marx’s letter to
Engels makes clear that even after the publication of volume one of Capital, he tried to
examine the validity of Liebig’s theory from a more critical perspective.

Notably, various political economists other than Marx and Roscher also joined in this
debate. As described by Foster, Henry Charles Carey had already referred to wasteful
agricultural production in the United States and claimed that the irresponsible “robbery
from the earth” constituted a serious “crime” against future generations.15 Liebig was also
interested in Carey and cited his work extensively, but Marx may not have been entirely
clear about their relationship when he read Agricultural Chemistry in 1865–66. Marx had
corresponded with Carey, who had sent him his book on slavery, which contained some of
his arguments about soil exhaustion, and Marx studied Carey’s economic works.16
However, Carey’s role in the overall soil debate likely became more apparent when Marx
encountered Eugen Dühring’s work. Marx started studying Dühring’s books in January
1868, after Louis Kugelmann sent him Dühring’s review of Capital—the first review of the
book anywhere—published in December 1867.

Dühring, a lecturer at the University of Berlin, was an enthusiastic supporter of Carey’s

economic system. He also integrated Liebig’s theory into his economic analysis as further
validation of Carey’s proposal to establish autarchic town-communities in which producers
and consumers live in harmony, without wasting plant nutrients and thus without
exhausting soils. Dühring maintained that Liebig’s theory of soil exhaustion “builds a pillar
on [Carey’s] system,” and claimed that

soil exhaustion, which has already become quite threatening in North America, for example,
will…be halted in the long run only through a commercial policy built upon the protection
and education of domestic labor. For the harmonious development of the various facilities of
one nation…promotes the natural circulation of materials [Kreislauf der Stoffe] and makes it
possible for plant nutrients to be returned to the soil from which they have been taken.17

In the manuscript for volume three of Capital, Marx envisioned a future society beyond the
antagonism between town and country in which “the associated producers rationally
regulat[e] their metabolic interchange with nature.” He must have been surprised to learn
that Dühring similarly demanded, as the “only countermeasure” against wasteful
production, the “conscious regulation of material distribution” by overcoming the division
between town and country.18 In other words, Marx’s claim, together with Dühring’s,
reflects a popular tendency of the “Liebig school” at the time. In subsequent years Marx’s
view of Dühring grew more critical, as Dühring began to promote his own system as the
only true foundation of social democracy. This likely reinforced Marx’s suspicion of
Dühring’s interpretation of soil exhaustion and its advocates, even if he continued to
recognize the usefulness of Liebig’s theory. In any case, at the beginning of 1868, the
discursive constellation already prompted Marx to study books “against Liebig’s soil-
exhaustion theory.”
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Liebig’s Malthusianism?
Marx was particularly concerned that Liebig’s warnings about soil exhaustion carried a
hint of Malthusianism. They rehabilitated, to borrow Dühring’s expression, “Malthus’s
ghost,” as Liebig appeared to provide a new “scientific” version of old Malthusian themes of
food scarcity and overpopulation.19 As noted above, the general tone of Liebig’s argument
shifted from one of optimism in the 1840s up through the mid-1850s to a quite pessimistic
one in the late 1850s and 1860s. Sharply critical of British industrial agriculture, he
predicted a dark future for European society, full of war and hunger, if the “law of
replacement” continued to be ignored:

In a few years, the guano reserves will be depleted, and then no scientific nor, so to speak,
theoretical disputes will be necessary to prove the law of nature which demands from man
that he cares for the preservation of living conditions.… For their self-preservation, nations
will be compelled to slaughter and annihilate each other in never-ending wars in order to
restore an equilibrium, and, God forbid, if two years of famine such as 1816 and 1817
succeed each other again, those who survive will see hundreds of thousands perish in the
streets.20

Liebig’s new pessimism appears quite distinct in this passage. While his view of modern
agriculture as a “robbery system” shows its superiority over the widespread ahistorical “law
of diminishing returns” of Malthus and Ricardo, his conclusion leaves his relation to
Malthusian ideas ambiguous. Indeed, Marx was particularly concerned about Liebig’s
references to the Ricardian theory. Liebig in fact personally knew John Stuart Mill and
may have been directly influenced by the latter. Ironically, however, as Marx points out,
Ricardian rent theory originated not with Ricardo or even with Malthus—and certainly not
with John Stuart Mill, as Liebig mistakenly supposes—but with James Anderson, who had
given it a historical basis in the degradation of the soil. What worried Marx, then, was the
frequent linking in his day of Liebig with Malthus and Ricardo—representing a logic
opposed to Marx’s own analysis, and which, in contrast to Malthus and Ricardo,
emphasized the historical nature of the soil problem.21

The question of Liebig’s Malthusianism may seem like an arcane detail in the larger debate
over soil exhaustion, but it is one of the main reasons why his Agricultural Chemistry
became so popular in 1862.22 For Dühring, this Malthusianism was not so problematic
because he believed that Carey’s economic system had already dispelled “Malthus’s ghost,”
showing that the development of society made it possible to cultivate better soils.23 Of
course, Marx could hardly accept this naïve presupposition, as he wrote to Engels in
November 1869: “Carey ignores even the most familiar facts.”24

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Thus in 1868 Marx began reading the work of authors who took a more critical stance
toward Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry. He was already familiar with arguments such as
Roscher’s, which held that the robbery system should be criticized from the point of view of
“natural science” but could be justified from an “economic” standpoint insofar as it was
more profitable.25 According to Roscher, it was only necessary to stop the robbery just
before it became too expensive to recover the original fertility of the soil—but market prices
would take care of that. Adopting Roscher’s arguments, Friedrich Albert Lange, a German
philosopher, argued against Dühring’s reception of Liebig and Carey in his J. St. Mill’s
Views of the Social Question [J. St. Mills Ansichten über die sociale Frage ] published in
1866. Marx read Lange’s book at the beginning of 1868, and it is no coincidence that his
notebook focuses on its fourth chapter, where Lange discusses the problems of rent theory
and soil exhaustion. Specifically, Marx noted Lange’s observation that Carey and Dühring
denounced “trade” with England as a cause of all evils and regarded a “protective tariff” as
the ultimate “panacea,” without Lange’s recognizing that “industry” possesses a
“centralizing tendency,” which creates not only the division of town and country but also
economic inequality.26 Similar to Roscher, Lange argued that “despite the natural
scientific correctness of Liebig’s theory,” robbery cultivation can be justified from a
“national economic” perspective.27

Related ideas can be also found in the work of the German economist Julius Au. Marx
owned a copy of Au’s Supplementary Fertilizers and their Meaning for National and
Private Economy [Hilfsdüngermittel in ihrer volks- und privatwirtschaftlichen
Bedeutung] (1869), which he marked up with marginal notes and comments.28 Although
he recognized the scientific value of Liebig’s mineral theory, Au doubted that the theory of
soil exhaustion could be regarded as an “absolute” natural law. It was instead, Au argued, a
“relative” theory with little meaning for the economies of Russia, Poland, or Asia Minor,
because in these areas agriculture could be sustained, presumably through extensive
development, without following the “law of replacement.”29 Yet Au seemingly forgot that
Liebig’s main concern was Western European countries. Moreover, Au ended up
uncritically accepting the price-regulation mechanisms of the market, which he, like
Roscher, expected to hinder excessive exploitation of soil power because it would simply
cease to be profitable. What remains of Liebig’s theory for Lange and Au is the simple fact
that soil could not be improved infinitely. They were, after all, neo-Malthusian supporters
of overpopulation theory and the law of diminishing returns.

Reacting to all this, Marx comments “Idiot!” [ Asinus!] and writes many incredulous
question marks in his copy of Au’s book.30 His evaluation of Lange’s books is similarly
hostile, as he ironically comments on Lange’s Malthusian explanation of history in his
letter to Kugelmann dated July 27, 1870.31 In addition, it is safe to assume that Marx was
not attracted to the idea of realizing sustainable agriculture through fluctuations in market

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prices. Since Marx was also unable to support Carey and Dühring, he set out to study the
problem of soil exhaustion more intensively in order to articulate a sophisticated critique
of the modern robbery system.

To sum up: Marx thought at first that Liebig’s description of the destructive effects of
modern agriculture could be used as a powerful argument against Ricardo and Malthus’s
abstract law of diminishing returns, but began to question Liebig’s theory after 1868, as the
debates over soil exhaustion increasingly took on a Malthusian tone. Marx therefore
backed off from his somewhat uncritical and exaggerated claim that Liebig’s analyses
“contain more flashes of insight than all the works of modern political economists put
together,” in preparation for the more extensive research into the problem that he clearly
intended for volumes two and three of Capital.

Marx and Fraas’s Theory of Metabolic Interaction

If Liebig’s Malthusian tendencies constituted a negative reason for Marx’s alteration of the
sentence on Liebig in the second edition of Capital, there was also a more positive one:
Marx encountered a number of authors who became as important as Liebig to his
ecological critique of political economy. Carl Fraas was one of them. In a letter from
January 1868, Marx asks Schorlemmer about Fraas, a German agriculturist and professor
at the University of Munich. Although Shorlemmer could not offer any specific information
about Fraas’s “alluvion theory,” Marx nevertheless began reading several books by Fraas in
the following months.

Fraas’s name first appears in Marx’s notebook between December 1867 and January 1868,
when he notes the title of Fraas’s 1866 book Agrarian Crises and Their Solutions [Die
Ackerbaukrisen und ihre Heilmittel], a polemic against Liebig’s theory of soil
exhaustion.32 When Marx wrote in a letter to Engels in January 1868 that “since I last
looked into the subject, all sorts of new things have appeared in Germany,” he was likely
thinking of Fraas’s book.

Just as Fraas’s book was published, his relations with Liebig grew very strained, after
Liebig criticized the scientific ignorance of agricultural educators and practical farmers in
Munich, where Fraas taught as a professor for many years. In response, Fraas defended the
agrarian praxis in Munich, and argued that Liebig’s theory had been oversold and
represented a retreat into Malthusian theory—one that ignored various historical forms of
agriculture that maintained and even increased productivity without causing soil
exhaustion. According to Fraas, Liebig’s pessimism arose from his tacit presupposition that
humans must be able to return inorganic substances and thus the soil demanded—if the
division between town and country is not to be dissolved—the introduction of artificial
fertilizers, which, however, would turn out to be too costly. In contrast, Fraas suggests a
more affordable method, using the power of nature itself in order to sustain the fertility of
the soil, as represented in his “theory of alluvion.”33
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In Charles Lyell’s definition, alluvion is “earth, sand, gravel, stones, and other transported
matter which has been washed away and thrown down by rivers, floods, or other causes,
upon land not permanently submerged beneath the waters of lakes or seas.”34 Alluvial
materials contain large quantities of the mineral substances vital for plant growth.
Consequently, soils developed from regular deposition of such materials—usually adjacent
to rivers in valleys—produce rich crops year after year without fertilizer, as in the
sandbanks of the Danube, the deltas of the Nile or the Po, or the tongues of land of the
Mississippi. The rejuvenating sediments in floodwater are derived from erosion further up
the watershed. Hence, the richness of the alluvial soil is a result of the impoverishment of
upriver soils, most likely from slopes of hills and mountains. Inspired by these examples in
nature, Fraas suggests constructing an “artificial alluvion” by regulating river water
through the building of temporary dams over agrarian fields, cheaply and almost eternally
providing them with essential minerals. Marx’s notebook confirms that he carefully studied
Fraas’s arguments for the practical merits of alluvion in agriculture.35

What interested Marx most about Fraas, however, was probably not the theory of alluvion.
After reading Fraas eagerly, documenting various passages in his notebooks, Marx writes
to Engels in a letter dated March 25, 1868, praising Fraas’s book Climate and the Plant
World Over Time [Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit]:

Very interesting is the book by Fraas (1847): Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit, eine
Geschichte beider [Climate and the Plant World Over Time], namely as proving that climate
and flora change in historical times.… He claims that with cultivation—depending on its
degree—the “moisture” so beloved by the peasants gets lost (hence also the plants migrate
from south to north), and finally steppe formation occurs. The first effect of cultivation is
useful, but finally devastating through deforestation, etc.… The conclusion is that cultivation
—when it proceeds in natural growth and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois he
naturally does not reach this point)—leaves deserts behind it, Persia, Mesopotamia, etc.,
Greece. So once again an unconscious socialist tendency!36

It might seem surprising that Marx found even “an unconscious socialist tendency” in
Fraas’s book, despite Fraas’s harsh critique of Liebig. Climate and the Plant World Over
Time elaborated how ancient civilizations, especially ancient Greece—Fraas had spent
seven years as an inspector of the court garden and professor of botany at the University of
Athens—collapsed after unregulated deforestation caused unsustainable changes in the
local environment. As indigenous plants could no longer adapt to the new environment,
steppe formation or, in the worst case, desertification set in. (Although Fraas’s
interpretation was influential, some would argue today that what occurred was not
“desertification” as such, but rather the growth of plants that required less moisture—
because so much of the rainfall was lost as runoff instead of infiltrating into soil.)

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In our context, it is first of all interesting to note that Fraas emphasized the significance of
a “natural climate” for plant growth, because of its great influence on the weathering
process of soils. It is therefore not enough simply to analyze the chemical composition of
soil alone, because mechanical and chemical reactions in the soil, which are essential for
the weathering process, depend heavily on climatic factors such as temperature, humidity,
and precipitation. This is why Fraas characterized his own research field and method as
“agricultural physics,” in clear contrast to Liebig’s “agricultural chemistry.”37 According to
Fraas, in certain areas where climatic conditions are more favorable and the soils are
adjacent to rivers and flood regularly with water containing sediments, it is possible to
produce large amounts of crops without fear of soil exhaustion, as nature automatically
fulfills the “law of replacement” through alluvial deposits. This, of course, would apply to
only some of the soils in any particular country.

After reading Fraas’s books, Marx grew more interested in such “agricultural physics,” as
he told Engels: “We must keep a close watch on the recent and very latest in agriculture.
The physical school is pitted against the chemical.“38 Here it is possible to discern a clear
shift in Marx’s interests. In January 1868, Marx was mainly following debates within the
“chemical school,” in terms of whether mineral or nitrogen fertilizer was more effective. As
he had already studied the issue in 1861, he now thought it necessary to study recent
developments “to some extent.” After two and a half months and intensive examination of
Fraas’s works, however, Marx grouped both Liebig and Lawes into one and the same
“chemical school” and treated Fraas’s theory as an independent “physical” school. Notably,
this categorization reflects Fraas’s own judgment, for he complained that both Liebig and
Lawes made abstract, one-sided arguments about soil exhaustion by putting too much
emphasis on only the chemical component of plant growth.39 As a result, Marx came to
believe that he “must” study the newest developments in the field of agriculture much more
carefully.

Fraas’s uniqueness is also evident in his attention to the human impact on the process of
historical climate change. Indeed, Fraas’s book offers one of the earliest studies on the
topic, later praised by George Perkins Marsh in Man and Nature (1864).40 Drawing on
ancient Greek texts, Fraas showed how plant species moved from south to north, or from
the plains to the mountains, as local climates gradually grow hotter and dryer. According
to Fraas, this climate change results from excessive deforestation demanded by ancient
civilizations. Such stories of the disintegration of ancient societies also have obvious
relevance for our contemporary situation.

Fraas likewise warned against the excessive use of timber by modern industry, a process
already well underway during his time that would have a huge impact on European
civilization. Marx’s readings of Fraas introduced him to the problem of Europe’s
disappearing forests, as documented in his notebook: “France has now no more than one-
twelfth of her earlier forest area, England only 4 big forests among 69 forests; in Italy and
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the southwestern European peninsula the stand of trees that was also common on the plain
in the past can be no longer found even in the mountains.”41 Fraas lamented that further
technological development would enable the cutting of trees at higher mountain elevations
and only accelerate deforestation.

Reading Fraas’s book, Marx came to see a great tension between ecological sustainability
and the ever-increasing demand for wood to fuel capitalist production. Marx’s insight into
the disturbance of “metabolic interaction” between human and nature in capitalism goes
beyond the problem of soil exhaustion in Liebig’s sense and extends to the issue of
deforestation. Of course, as the second edition of Capital indicates, this does not mean that
Marx abandoned Liebig’s theory. On the contrary, he continued to honor Liebig’s
contribution as essential to his critique of modern agriculture. Nonetheless, when Marx
wrote of an “unconscious socialist tendency” in Fraas’s work, it is clear that Marx now
regarded the rehabilitation of the metabolism between human and nature as a central
project of socialism, with a much larger scope than in the first edition of volume one of
Capital.

Marx’s interest in deforestation was not limited to reading Fraas. In the beginning of 1868,
he also read John D. Tuckett’s History of the Past and Present State of the Labouring
Population, noting the numbers of important pages. On one of those few pages Marx
recorded, Tuckett argues:

the indolence of our forefathers appears a subject of regret, in neglecting the raising of trees
as well as in many instances causing the destruction of the forests without sufficiently
replacing them with young plants. This general waste appears to have been greatest just
before the use of sea coal [for smelting iron] was discovered when the consumption for the
use of forging Iron, was so great that it appeared as if it would sweep down all the timber and
woods in the country.… However at the present day the plantations of trees, not only add to
the usefulness, but also tend to the embellishment of the country, and produce screens to
break the rapid currants of the winds.… The great advantage in planting a large body of
wood in a naked country is not at first perceived. Because there is nothing to resist the cold
winds, cattle fed thereon are stunted in growth and the vegetation has often the appearance of
being scorched with fire, or beat with a stick. Moreover by giving warmth and comfort to
cattle, half the fodder will satisfy them.42

Forests play an important economic role in agriculture and stock farming, and this is
clearly what interested Marx in 1868.

Although Marx does not directly mention either Fraas’s or Tuckett’s work after 1868, the
influence of their ideas is clearly visible in the second manuscript for volume two of
Capital, written between 1868 and 1870. Marx had already noted in the manuscript for
volume three that deforestation would not be sustainable under the system of private
property, even if it could be more or less sustainable when conducted under state
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property.43 After 1868, Marx paid greater attention to the problem of the modern robbery
system, which he now expanded from crop production to include deforestation. In this
vein, Marx cites Friedrich Kirchhof’s Manual of Agricultural Business Operations
[Handbuch der landwirthschaftlichen Betriebslehre] (1852), in support of the
incompatibility between the logic of capital and the material characteristics of
forestation.44 He points out that the long time required for forestation imposes a natural
limit, compelling capital to try to shorten the cycle of deforestation and regrowth as much
as possible. In the manuscript to volume two of Capital, Marx comments on a passage
from Kirchhof’s book: “The development of culture and of industry in general has evinced
itself in such energetic destruction of forest that everything done by it conversely for their
preservation and restoration appears infinitesimal.”45 Marx is certainly conscious of the
danger that this deforestation will cause not only a wood shortage but also a changing
climate, which is tied to a more existential crisis of human civilization.

A comparison with the writing of the young Marx illustrates this dramatic development of
his ecological thought. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels write of the historic
changes brought by the power of capital:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and
more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of
Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture,
steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation,
canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground.46

Michael Löwy has criticized this passage as a manifestation of Marx and Engels’s naïve
attitude toward modernization and ignorance of ecological destruction under capitalist
development: “Paying homage to the bourgeoisie for its unprecedented ability to develop
the productive forces,” he writes, “Marx and Engels unreservedly celebrated the ‘Subjection
of Nature’s forces to man’ and the ‘clearing of whole continents for cultivation’ by modern
bourgeois production.”47 Löwy’s reading of Marx’s alleged “Prometheanism” might seem
hard to refute here, although Foster provides another view.48 However, Löwy’s criticism,
even if his interpretation accurately reflects Marx’s thinking at the time, can hardly be
generalized across Marx’s entire career, since his critique of capitalism became steadily
more ecological with each passing year. As seen above, the evolution of his thought
subsequent to volume one of Capital shows that in his later years, Marx became seriously
interested in the problem of deforestation, and it is highly doubtful that the late Marx
would praise mass deforestation in the name of progress, without regard to the conscious
and sustainable regulation of the metabolic interaction between humanity and nature.

The Further Scope of Marx’s Ecological Critique

Marx’s ecological interests in this period also extended to stock farming. In 1865–66, he
had already read Léonce de Lavergne’s Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland ,
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in which the French agricultural economist argued for the superiority of English
agriculture. Lavergne offered as an example the English breeding process developed by
Robert Bakewell, with its “system of selection,” enabling sheep to grow faster and provide
more meat, with only the bone mass necessary for their survival.49 Marx’s reaction in his
notebook to this “improvement” is suggestive: “Characterized by precocity, in entirety
sickliness, want of bone, a lot of development of fat and flesh etc. All these are artificial
products. Disgusting!”50 Such remarks belie any image of Marx as an uncritical supporter
of modern technological advances.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bakewell’s “New Leicester” sheep had been
brought into Ireland, where they were bred with indigenous sheep to yield a new breed,
Roscommon, meant to increase Ireland’s agricultural productivity.51 Marx was fully aware
of this artificial modification of regional ecosystems for the purposes of capital
accumulation, and rejected it despite its apparent “improvement” of productivity: the
health and well-being of animals were being subordinated to the utility of capital. Thus
Marx made clear in 1865 that this kind of “progress” was really no progress at all, because
it could only be achieved by annihilating the sustainable metabolic interaction between
humans and nature.

When Marx returned to the topic of capitalist stock farming in the second manuscript for
volume two of Capital, he found it unsustainable for the same reason that marked
capitalist forestation: The time of production is often simply too long for capital. Here
Marx refers to William Walter Good’s Political, Agricultural and Commercial Fallacies
(1866):

For this reason, remembering that farming is governed by the principles of political economy,
the calves which used to come south from the dairying counties for rearing, are now largely
sacrificed at times at a week and ten days old, in the shambles of Birmingham, Manchester,
Liverpool, and other large neighboring towns.… What these little men now say, in reply to
recommendations to rear, is, “We know very well it would pay to rear on milk, but it would
first require us to put our hands in our purse, which we cannot do, and then we should have to
wait a long time for a return, instead of getting it at once by dairying.”52

No matter how fast the growth of cattle becomes, thanks to Bakewell and other breeders, it
only shortens the time of premature slaughter in favor of a shorter turnover for capital.
According to Marx, this too does not count as “development” of productive forces, precisely
because it can only take place by sacrificing sustainability for the sake of short-term profit.

All these are just examples found in the notebooks of 1868. Marx at the time was also
intrigued by William Stanley Jevons’s Coal Question (1865), whose warning about the
coming exhaustion of England’s coal supply provoked intense discussion in the
Parliament.53 Without doubt, Marx was studying the books mentioned above as he
prepared the manuscripts of Capital, and continued to do so into the 1870s and 1880s. So
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it is quite reasonable to conclude that Marx planned to use these new empirical materials
to elaborate on issues such as the turnover of capital, rent theory, and the profit rate. In
one passage, Marx actually writes that premature slaughter will ultimately cause “big
damages” to agricultural production.54 Or, as Marx discusses in another section of the
manuscript of 1867–68, the exhaustion of soils or mines could also reach such an extent
that the “diminishing natural condition of productivity” in agriculture and extractive
industry could no longer be counterbalanced by increasing labor productivity.55

Not surprisingly, Marx’s calculations of profit rates in the manuscript include those cases
where profit rates sink due to price increases in the “floating” parts of constant capital,
suggesting that the law of the falling profit rate should not be treated as a mere
mathematical formula. Its real dynamic is tightly linked to the material components of
capital and cannot be treated independently of them.56 In other words, the valorization
and accumulation of capital is not an abstract movement of value; capital is necessarily
incarnated in material components, inevitably taking on an “organic composition”—a term
taken from Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry—constrained by concrete material elements of
the labor process. Despite its elasticity, this organic structure of capital cannot be
arbitrarily modified, or made to diverge too far from the material character of each natural
element of production. Capital ultimately cannot ignore the natural world.

This does not mean that capitalism will inevitably collapse one day. Fully exploiting the
material elasticity, capital always tries to overcome limitations through scientific and
technological innovation. Capitalism’s potential for adaptation is so great that it can likely
survive as a dominant social system until most parts of the earth become unsuitable for
human habitation.57 As Marx’s notebooks on natural science document, he was
particularly interested in comprehending the rifts in the process of metabolic interaction
between humans and nature that result from endless transformations of the material world
for the sake of the efficient valorization of capital. These metabolic rifts are all the more
disastrous because they erode the material conditions for “sustainable human
development.”58

Marx understood these rifts as a manifestation of the fundamental contradictions of

capitalism, and thought it necessary to study them carefully as part of the building of a
radical socialist movement. As shown in this article, Marx was well aware that the
ecological critique of capitalism was not completed by Liebig’s theory, and tried to develop
and extend it by drawing on new research from diverse areas of ecology, agriculture, and
botany. Marx’s economic and ecological theory is not outdated at all, but remains fully
open to new possibilities for integrating natural scientific knowledge with the critique of
contemporary capitalism.

Notes

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 1. ↩See John Bellamy Foster, preface to the new edition of Paul Burkett, Marx and
Nature (Chicago: Haymarket, 2014).
2. ↩Funding and support for the MEGA project has now been extended for the next 15
years. This article is based on my research as a visiting scholar at the Berlin-
Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in 2015. I am especially thankful to Gerald
Hubmann, who supported my project from the beginning.
3. ↩Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, “The Podolinsky Myth,” Historical
Materialism 16, no. 1 (2008): 115–61.
4. ↩Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), chapter 4; Kohei
Saito, “The Emergence of Marx’s Critique of Modern Agriculture,” Monthly Review
66, no. 5 (October 2014): 25–46.
5. ↩Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) II, vol. 6
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975), 409.
6. ↩John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 7.
7. ↩MEGA II, vol. 5, 410.
8. ↩Carl-Erich Vollgraf, Introduction to MEGA II, vol. 4.3, 461. It is important,
however, to note that Marx had said the same thing in a letter to Engels on February
13, 1866. See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works (New York:
International Publishers, 1975), vol. 42, 227. There he wrote, “I had to plough
through the new agricultural chemistry in Germany, in particular Liebig and
Schönbein, which is more important for this matter than all the economists put
together.”
9. ↩Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 638; emphasis added.
10. ↩Liebig’s introduction includes a section called “National Economy and Agriculture”;
Marx begins his excerpts with this section, then returns to the beginning of
introduction.
11. ↩Wilhelm Roscher, System der Volkswirthschaft, 4th ed., vol. 2 (Stuttgart:
Cotta’scher, 1865), 66.
12. ↩Karl Marx and Friederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 42, 507–8.
13. ↩See especially Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (London: Penguin, 1981), 878.
14. ↩For an introductory discussion of Liebig’s theory, see William H. Brock, Justus von
Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
chapter 6.
15. ↩Foster, Marx’s Ecology, 153.
16. ↩Michael Perelman, “The Comparative Sociology of Environmental Economics in the
Works of Henry Carey and Karl Marx,” History of Economics Review 36 (2002): 85–
110.
17. ↩Eugen Dühring, Carey’s Umwälzung der Volkswirthschaftslehre und
Socialwissenschaft (Munich: Fleischmann, 1865), xiii.

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18. ↩Eugen Dühring, Kritische Grundlegung der Volkswirthschaftslehre (Berlin:
Eichhoff, 1866), 230.
19. ↩Dühring, Carey’s Umwälzung, 67. Though Dühring does not use this expression to
characterize Liebig’s theory, Karl Arnd claims that it is haunted by a “ghost of soil
exhaustion.” See Karl Arnd, Justus von Liebig’s Agrikulturchemie und sein Gespenst
der Bodenerschöpfung (Frankfurt am Main: Brönner, 1864).
20. ↩Liebig, Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaues (Braunschweig: Friedrich
Vieweg, 1862), 125.
21. ↩On the importance of Anderson to Marx’s whole argument see Foster, Marx’s
Ecology, 142–47.
22. ↩Liebig intentionally wrote in provocative terms in hopes of restoring his
professional fame, and in that sense the seventh edition was quite successful. See
Mark R. Finlay, “The Rehabilitation of an Agricultural Chemist: Justus von Liebig
and the Seventh Edition,” Ambix 38, no. 3 (1991): 155–66.
23. ↩Dühring, Carey’s Umwälzung, 67.
24. ↩Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 43, 384.
25. ↩Roscher, Nationalökonomie des Ackerbaues, 65.
26. ↩Marx-Engels Archive (MEA), International Institute of Social History, Sign. B 107,
31–32. Albert Friedrich Lange, J. St. Mill’s Ansichten über die sociale Frage und die
angebliche Umwälzung der Socialwissenschaft durch Carey (Duisburg: Falk and
Lange, 1866), 197.
27. ↩Ibid., 203.
28. ↩MEGA IV, vol. 32, 42.
29. ↩Julius Au, Hilfsdüngermittel in ihrer volks- und privatwirtschaftlichen Bedeutung
(Heidelberg: Verlagsbuchhandlung von Fr. Bassermann, 1869), 179.
30. ↩MEGA IV, vol. 32, 42.
31. ↩Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 43, 527.
32. ↩MEA, Sign. B 107, 13.
33. ↩Carl Fraas, Die Ackerbaukrisen und ihre Heilmittel (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1866), 151.
34. ↩Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, vol. 3 (London: John Murray, 1832), 61.
35. ↩MEA, Sign. B 107, 94; Carl Fraas, Die Natur der Landwirthschaft, vol. 1 (München:
Cotta’sche, 1857) 17.
36. ↩Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 42, 559.
37. ↩Fraas, Natur der Landwirthschaft, vol. 1, 357.
38. ↩Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 42, 559.
39. ↩Fraas, Die Ackerbaukrisen und ihre Heilmittel, 141.
40. ↩George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2003), 14.
41. ↩MEA, Sign. B 112, 45. Carl Fraas, Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte beider (Landshut: J. G. Wölfle, 1847), 7.

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42. ↩MEA, Sign. B 111, 1. John Devell Tuckett, A History of the Past and Present State of
the Labouring Population (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1846),
vol. 2, 402.
43. ↩MEGA II, vol. 4.2, 670.
44. ↩Friedrich Kirchhof, Handbuch der landwirthschaftlichen Betriebslehre (Dessau:
Moriz Ratz, 1852). Marx owned a copy of this book (MEGA IV, vol. 32, 673).
45. ↩MEGA II, vol. 11, 203; Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 2 (London: Penguin, 1978), 322.
46. ↩Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6, 489.
47. ↩Michael Löwy, “Globalization and Internationalism: How Up-to-date is the
Communist Manifesto?” Monthly Review 50, no. 6 (November 1998): 20.
48. ↩John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution(New York: Monthly Review Press,
2009), 213–32.
49. ↩Léonce de Lavergne, Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland
(Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1855), 19–20, 37–39.
50. ↩MEA, Sign. B 106, 209; William Walter Good, Political, Agricultural and
Commerical Fallacies (London: Edward Stanford, 1866), 11–12.
51. ↩Janet Vorwald Dohner, ed., The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered
Livestock and Poultry Breeds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 121.
52. ↩MEGA II, vol. 11, 188.
53. ↩MEA, Sign. B 128, 2.
54. ↩MEGA II, vol. 11, 187.
55. ↩MEGA II, vol. 4.3, 80.
56. ↩For a more mathematical treatment of the law, see Michael Heinrich, An
Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 2012), chapter 7.
57. ↩Burkett, Marx and Nature, 192.
58. ↩John Bellamy Foster, “The Great Capitalist Climacteric,” Monthly Review 67, no. 6
(November 2015): 9.

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