Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology: Departing from Marx

by Timothy W. Luke

The world that was revolutionized by industrialization is being remade by the information revolution. But this is mostly a revolution from above, increasingly shaped by a new class of technocrats, experts, and professionals in the service of corporate capitalism. Using Marx as a touchstone, Timothy W. Luke warns that if communities are not to be overwhelmed by new class economic and political agendas, then the practice of democracy must be reconstituted on a more populist basis. However, the galvanizing force for this new, more community-centered populism will not be the proletariat, as Marx predicted, nor contemporary militant patriotic groups. Rather, Luke argues that many groups unified by a concern for ecological justice present the strongest potential opposition to capitalism. Wide-ranging and lucid, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology is essential reading in the age of information.

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 2 out of 5]

speed read most of this bc tim told me that all of my criticisms of Ecocritique were addressed in this book. well they weren't really, just a confounding text in which everything is populism versus the new class, it's just this weird amalgam of christopher lasch and green critique. i get that the 90s sucked and no one wanted to be a marxist anymore but it's like tying yourself in knots to develop a critique of capitalist ecological destruction that purposefully avoids it. anyway, here's the paragraph i wrote about it in the tim luke critique article:

It is important to note that Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology: Departing from Marx provides more nuanced and complicated portraits of populism and environmentalism alike. Here, Luke more directly contends with what is salvageable from the Marxist critique of political economy. Environmental justice movements are referenced more frequently (though their politics of anti-racism is not). Yet a somewhat vague populism remains the lodestar. The text always has an eye towards how Marx might be “feeding into currents of ecological populism” such that the most “comprehensive critique of instrumentally rational corporate capital may now be populistic rather than proletarian.” While the division between bourgeoisie and proletarian is described as “simple abstractions”, it is ultimately replaced by a less revealing opposition between the “new class” and “ordinary people”--the latter the subjects of populism. The text frequently references “new populist movements” and at times speaks directly of, or to, populists--but who are these people and movements? The politics of populism remains vague, even if it is at times worryingly admitted that “much of [populism today] stands on the right”--particularly apparent given such a movement derives, for some, from the feeling that “‘a homeland’ for Americans has now become alien for too many people because Japanese executives, Washington bureaucrats, Hollywood scriptwriters, Harvard professors, or ATF agents are all rudely intruding uninvited into their lives in apparently authoritarian ways.” Ultimately, the following questions I want to draw out are deepened rather than answered by this text.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought-provoking ideas on approaching capitalism and environmentality (not Agarwal's style), but a dense and difficult to penetrate style that is sometimes highly repetitive. His analysis of the Unabomber's manifesto is a revealing counter to the news coverage of him at the time of his arrest, although it seems rather dated now.