Capitalism and ecological sustainability: the shaping of environmental policies

Abstract

Detailed analyses of environmental policies and their implications for the ecological sustainability of capitalism are missing from the eco-Marxist literature. Moreover, environmental policies have been often dismissed by several eco-Marxists on the ground that they are shaped on capital's terms. It is the objective of this paper to theorize the shaping of environmental regulation from a value-theoretic and class struggle perspective. It is argued that the negative economic impacts of pollution and resource depletion, captured by prices and rents, instigate various class and environmental conflicts and struggles which reshape the interchange between capitalism and nature. The state as a social site becomes an arena of these struggles. The state is called upon by the many different competing agents to mediate their access to nature. Evidence from many concrete cases shows that environmental policies and adjustments have been the outcome of this complex social interaction. However, the emerging ecological restructuring of capitalism can not guarantee its ecological sustainability. In particular, it gives rise to new problems and contradictions rendering ecological sustainability of capitalism uncertain.