Marx's relevance to the debate on technology and the environment

Abstract

Karl Marx’s studies indicate that the continuity of capitalism, driven mainly by the aim of profit maximization, tends both to increase the exploitation and expropriation of the labour force, and to cause the deterioration of the economical production base, the source of wealth, or, in other words, of nature. However, Marx’s originality in showing that the productive forces turn into destructive forces was not taken in as it should be by optimistic Marxists about the development of technology, about industrialization and economical
growth. With the worsening environmental crisis, Marxian thought becomes more relevant to present-day problems, as it demonstrates the unsustainable character of the capitalist mode of production, and the destructive dimension of its technological development. The destruction of the environment follows the same logic of the exploitation of a human being by another
one. By the alienation (Entfremdung) of work, man moves away from nature and becomes a strange even to himself, in a double process of dehumanization and destruction.