Abstract

Four papers of John Bellamy Foster have been brought together in a short book entitled Marx écologiste. Foster is a theorist of ecosocialism who puts forward an original interpretation of Marx’s work. The latter is frequently presented as a scientist conception the effect of which was to stifle subsequent attempts within the communist movement to apprehend capitalism’s destruction of nature. Foster shows that such an interpretation is not valid. He claims that Marx has an ecologist consciousness. To support his claim, Foster uses three arguments. Firstly, Marx elaborates the concept of metabolism, that is to say the relations between human activities and nature. Secondly, while the word sustainability is not to be found in Marx’s Capital, the idea is indeed present. Thirdly, Marx has understood that nature and the human societies move simultaneously. Foster’s demonstration is convincing. At the least, it will relaunch the discussion about the integration of the ecology in Marxism.