As seen in the previous chapter, numerous critics have accused Marx of ‘Prometheanism’, and even self-proclaimed Marxists have concluded that his productivism is incompatible with environmentalism. However, with the deepening ecological crises under neoliberal globalization, the need to critically investigate capitalism’s destructive influence upon the ecosystem has become much more pressing. Having rediscovered Marx’s ecology in this context, various ecosocialists today employ the concept of ‘metabolic rift’ in order to analyse environmental degradation under capitalist production. Consequently, ecology has become one of the central fields for enriching the legacy of Marx’s Capital in the 21st century. However, some Marxists still refuse to acknowledge the potentiality of Marx’s ecology, dismissing it as ‘apocalyptic’ (Harvey 1996: 194). In particular, ‘Western Marxism’ broadly defined is often dismissive of Marx’s ecosocialist project as an alternative to capitalism. For example, in an interview published in Examined Life, Slavoj Žižek ironically reformulates Marx’s famous remark, maintaining that ecology is ‘a new opium for the masses’ (Žižek 2009: 158). Alain Badiou (2008: 139) repeats exactly the same judgement.

One of the reasons for this denial of Marx’s ecology can be traced back to an old problem that pivots around the ‘intellectual relationship’ between Marx and Engels (Carver 1983), that is, the identity and difference of these two founders of socialism. It is well known that Western Marxism as initiated by Lukács regarded natural science as Engels’s domain of expertise, as in Adorno’s comment that Marx’s ‘concept of “nature” in which productivity is consummated, also remains underdeveloped, as does the famous expression “metabolism with nature”’ (Adorno 1974: 268). Since Western Marxism neglected Marx’s extensive research in the natural sciences and marginalized his central concept of ‘metabolism’, it now faces a dilemma in the Anthropocene. It cannot develop a Marxist critique of ecological degradation unless it admits its earlier one-sided interpretation of Marx’s social philosophy. Consequently, Western Marxists deny the possibility of Marx’s ecology in order to defend their own theoretical consistency.

In contrast to Adorno, Žižek and Badiou, John Bellamy Foster (2000) and Paul Burkett (1999) adopted a more fruitful approach to the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels. They not only pay attention to Marx’s engagement with natural science but also effectively employ his methodological framework in order to analyse current environmental issues, demonstrating the relevance of Marx’s ecology in today’s world.