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Introduction
Many ecological thinkers have suggested that Marxism does not provide a useful perspective on environmental crises and the requirements of an environmentally sustainable society. The ecological criticisms of Marxism are many and quite varied. Nonetheless, they nearly all have in common the fundamental charge of "Prometheanism" (or "productivism") against Marx. In applauding capitalism's development of the productive forces as a precondition of communism, Marx evidently embraces the view--said to be firmly rooted in the enlightenment tradition--that human progress hinges on the subjugation of nature to human purposes. Human development thus involves a struggle between people and nature in which people come out on top. The critics labeling Marx a Promethean typically suggest that he foresees a continuation and even an intensification of human domination over nature under communism, conceived as a society of ever-expanding per capita levels of material production and consumption with reduced work time as enabled by the further development of the mechanized technologies bequeathed by capitalism. In arguing that "the continued `development' of industrial production coheres with socialist ideology," for example, Andrew McLaughlin suggests:
Marx praises capitalism for the development of the means of production which, under socialism, will make possible the reduction of the amount of labor required of all humans, and he envisions a general material abundance as the substratum of communism.... Labor falls within the realm of necessity. Marxism promises the maximum possible emancipation from this realm, a freedom which is based on the development of the means of production and a rationally administered social organization. For Marxism, there is simply no basis for recognizing any interest in the liberation of nature from human domination. (1990, 95)
Enzo Mingione also detects a Prometheanism in Marx that explains "how difficult it is to reconcile [the] development of Marxism with an approach that seriously considers the question of `nature'":
Marx believed capitalism to be a necessary step--however painful, unjust and disruptive-in the historical development of human society. He did not see much room for argument on this point, and regarded the organization of human relations and the relations between humans and nature as quite rigid in the capitalist mode of production. From this sprang a social critique which formed the basis for political movements and trade unions and focused on...