Contributions from Marx on the relation society-nature and the ecological imperialism in Latin America

Abstract

Political ecology is a field of study that is historically contextualized and is divided into theoretical currents and epistemological discussions. One of them is Marxist ecology, which is based on Marx’s and Engels’s thought and uses the method of historical materialism to analyze the issue of nature. Thus, aim of this paper is to understand the main contributions of Marxist ecology to Latin American political ecology by focusing on the relations between society and nature, theoretically interpreted by Marxist ecologists on Marx’s thesis and the concept of ecological imperialism, analyzed by Marxist ecology authors, which in concrete reality has a strong role in the domination of nature in Latin America. The article is structured in an initial explanation of the main contributions of Marx's thought, as the concept of social metabolism refers to his conception of the relations between nature and the human being, and its “fracture” in the capitalist production mode, essential to understand the functioning of capitalism on the exploitation of nature. In this academic work, the main objective is to point out what are the most central concepts that the Marxist thought, by its interpretation of the Marxian work focused on ecology, can contribute to the ecological issue in Latin America. For this reason, the concept of ecological imperialism is added to the debate, as one of the issues that most affect the countries of the Global South, therefore central to the argument, to make a correlation between Latin America political ecology and the reading of Marxist ecology from Marx’s contributions. The article is classified as theoretical research and it is assumed that ecology can be an important social and political tool, which has the potential to act as an emancipatory political force.

Keywords: Marxist Ecology; Society-nature relation; Latin America; Ecological Imperialism.