Marx and the fundamental unsustainability of capital: economy and humanity

Abstract

Two major axes have guided the contemporary environ- mental debate: one that makes it from an a-historical perspective in which a generic humanity is related to the nature from which it is di- chotomously separated and another in which a historical and socially contextualized approach is privileged. Despite the differences, both approach the main theme: the question of limits. More specifically, both axes end up restricting their critical reach to the debate about the limits external to capitalism. We propose to make explicit the unsus- tainability of capital from its own internal limits in two closely linked dimensions: an economic unsustainability that manifests itself in cri- ses of overproduction and a human unsustainability that is based on the fetishism of commodity. These two dimensions reveal to us that criticism, in order to be effective, instead of addressing the limits ex- ternal to capital, must focus on the limits that are set by the immanent and contradictory logic of capital.