Mike Davis: Capitalism’s Nature (13. Marx-Herbstschule)
Channel: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
Date: 2020-10-24

There are three areas in which capital has undertaken extensive access to nature and human nature in the last two decades: 1. expansion of the agro-industry and economization of food production, 2. the expansion of the tourism industry and 3. the rationalization in the health care sector. The Covid-19 epidemic suddenly shows that these dispositions of natural and human resources are not guided by ecological responsibility and do not serve to protect, preserve or restore, but rather for profitable exploitation.

What does the global Pandemic have to do with the California megafires? Are they isolated natural phenomena or are they connected to the dynamic and structure of the current economic system we live in? Join us for this online lecture with Mike Davis on the emergence of a depauperate ‘second nature’ as a result of the interaction of climate change, invasive plant species and racially exclusive exurbanization.

Such events, although they arise from the capitalist mode of production, are naturalized as natural phenomena. On the one hand, they are neutralized, on the other hand, they are demonized as a form of force that transcends human actions. Mike Davis encounters this twofold ideology of an independent, neutral and at the same time overpowering nature with Marx and Engels.