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<article class="post-30852 post type-post status-publish
format-standard hentry category-books-reports
category-ecosocialism category-history
category-marxism-ecology tag-john-bellamy-foster
tag-peter-critchley article-type-book-reviews">
<div class="superhead">Essential Reading</div>
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<h1 class="title entry-title">The Return of Nature:
Socialism and Ecology</h1>
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<div class="post-meta">Posted on <abbr class="date
time published updated"
title="2020-11-13T11:37:01-0500">November 13, 2020</abbr>
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<td style="width: 100%;"><span
style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Bulletin</strong>:
On the day this review was published, it
was announced that <em>The Return of
Nature</em> has won this year’s
Deutscher Memorial Prize, awarded annually
to “a book which exemplifies the best and
most innovative new writing in or about
the Marxist tradition.”</span></td>
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<p><strong><em><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-return-of-nature/"
target="_blank"
rel="https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-return-of-nature/
noopener noreferrer"><img class="alignright
wp-image-30855 size-full"
src="https://i2.wp.com/climateandcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Return-of-Nature.jpg?resize=350%2C540&ssl=1"
alt="" width="350" height="540"></a><br>
</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>John Bellamy Foster’s brilliant
recovery of a century of ecological and
socialist thought will inform, enable, and
inspire a new generation of reds and greens</em></strong></p>
<hr>
<p>John Bellamy Foster<strong><br>
<em><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-return-of-nature/">THE
RETURN OF NATURE<br>
Socialism and Ecology</a></em></strong><br>
Monthly Review Press, 2020</p>
<p><strong>reviewed by Peter Critchley</strong></p>
<p>In an age in which the call for system change is
being heard more and more, in increasing
recognition of the socio-economic causes of
climate crisis, a book establishing the connection
between socialism and ecology could not be more
timely. In tracing the evolution of that
connection, John Bellamy Foster’s <em>The Return
of Nature </em>identifies the conditions for an
effective ecosocialism.</p>
<p>The book is a work of recovery in several related
senses: of Marx and Engels and those they inspired
as pioneer social ecologists; of nature as
necessarily ingrained in social analysis; of
dialectics as a critical-practical method; of
materialism as field of immanence and emergence;
of socialism as the systemic mediation of the
social-natural relation; and, importantly, of
politics as the practical engagement with the
world, rendering knowledge and reason socially
effective.</p>
<p>Though neither Marx nor Engels used the word
“ecology,” both displayed a critical systematic
interest in the environmental questions arising
from the metabolic interchange between human
society and nature. Having established the
foundations of Marx’s socio-ecological critique of
capitalist society in <em>Marx’s Ecology </em>(MR
Press, 2000)<em>, </em>Foster traces its further
development in <em>The Return of Nature </em>in
the work of an impressive range of socialist
scientists and thinkers. Taking up the story from
the deaths of Darwin and Marx in 1882 and 1883,
with a primary focus upon Britain, Foster shows
that from its inception, ecology was “deeply
intertwined” with “struggles for human equality
and the revolt against capitalist society.”</p>
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