Ecology, Politics and the Crisis of Marxism

Mercer, Samuel J.R. (2024) Ecology, Politics and the Crisis of Marxism. Rethinking Marxism, 36 (2). pp. 175-194. ISSN 0893-5696

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Abstract

This article examines the Marxist-humanism of two recently-published articles in leading journals of Marxist theory (Ahn, 2023; Flisfeder, 2023), which argue that post-humanism within social science and philosophy has produced an apolitical response to the question of ecological crisis. The articles assert that the post-humanist insistence on removing the human subject from the centre of theoretical enquiry has left this theory without a political motor, and that Marxist theoretical responses to ecological catastrophe must contain a political and ethical injunction upon the human subject to take action in the face of this catastrophe. This article argues that post-humanism’s apoliticism is inherited from the ideological structure that it shares with theoretical humanism and that the insistence of these authors on Marxist-humanism is doomed to reproduce the very apoliticism they attempt to escape. The article argues that the renewal of this discussion is indicative of a crisis of Marxism (Althusser, 1979), and gestures towards a theoretical anti-humanism, reconstructed through a Spinozist-Marxist political anthropology, as a way of developing a more effective knowledge of political intervention in the face of ecological catastrophe.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article submitted for consideration in Rethinking Marxism. The final version is available from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08935696.2024.2328666
Keywords:	Marxist-humanism; post-humanism; anti-humanism; ecology; politics.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Samuel Mercer
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2024 11:44
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2024 11:06
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4166

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