Marx Maligned, Marx Promethean, Marx contra Engels

Abstract

Introductory comments for panel presentation held at Marx in the Anthropocene (https://www.marxintheanthropocene.com/) Conference entitled: Marx in the Anthropocene Reading Group: Posthumanist perspectives on agency and degrowth Marx has been not only much maligned, but also much misunderstood and misrepresented. The debate about Marx in relation to ecological questions usually concerns Marx’s later writings and in unpublished notebooks that fell into the hands of Engels. As our contemporary society begins to understand the cataclysmic change human activity has upon the world, how important is it to uncover an ecological Marx? Can one be a Marxist, a socialist, or an anti-capitalist and develop an ecological critique of the present without having to legitimize that critique through Marx’s authority? In Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism, a book that seeks to develop an understanding of the ecologic Marx, we may ask how convincing author Kohei Saito’s claim to have discovered a post-1868 ecological turn in Marx's thinking. Do these later works overcome criticisms of Promethean worldviews often associated with Marx? To what extent is Saito’s book primarily a work of Marxology?