KARL MARX’ ECOLOGY: TOTALIZATION OF SOCIAL METABOLISM
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy and Law оf the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russia, Kondrashov P. N. 
Published: April 2023

Abstract. The purpose of this article is to attempt a conceptual reconstruction of Marx’s theory of social metabolism. The author shows that every living being exists due to the exchange of substances between itself and nature (the universal metabolism of nature). A specific human generic form of such metabolism is praxis that is, conscious transformative activity (social metabolism), the basic form of which is labor as an exchange between man/society and nature, mediated by production, technique and technology. Criticizing narrowly ecological, economic and purely industrial interpretations of the concept of social metabolism, reduced by modern ecological Marxists (P. Burkett, B. Clark, I. Mészáros, J. Moore, C. Royle, K. Saito, J. B. Foster) mostly to various aspects of the material-energy exchange between man (society) and nature, the author proves that K. Marx this form of social metabolism is fundamental for the existence of human society, but not the only one. The author, relying on the entire corpus of texts by K. Marx, and using the methods of textual analysis, reconstruction and extrapolation, shows that in the process of unfolding labor metabolism, specific socio-anthropogenic “worlds” are formed, namely the world of nature, drawn into the sphere of human activity; the world of joint activity as the world of public relations and interpersonal communication; the world of material and spiritual culture; the inner world of the individual. In each of these “worlds” people carry out certain specific modifications of the generic praxis — material production, social activities for the reproduction of culture, social and interpersonal communication, and existential relations to the world. Each of these forms of praxis represents specific varieties of social metabolism within which such types of exchange are carried out as the exchange between man and nature (labor, material production), the exchange of activities between social groups in objective social relations, the exchange of emotions, likes / dislikes, knowledge, traditions, etc. in interpersonal communication and socialization processes. From this analysis, it is concluded that social metabolism totally permeates all levels and structures of social and individual existence, linking them into an organic integrity — the social universe. Because of this, in the concept of Marx there is a totalization of the social universe. This radically distinguishes the ecology of K. Marx from all other forms of ecology, since it is not a doctrine of the interaction of society with nature (ecology) and not calls for environmental protection (environmental studies), but a general socio-praxeological doctrine of the world (internally connected social metabolism) in which man and society exist. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that some of the reconstructed ecological ideas of K. Marx allow us to see that socio-metabolic processes occur not only between man and nature, but cover and permeate all structures and levels of the social universe. Therefore, modern environmental problems can only be solved in a comprehensive, systematic, total way: starting with environmental protection, rational use of natural resources and saving production and ending with sustainable social relations and what academician Dmitry Likhachev called the ecology of culture.