# Ecosocialism: The Class Political Economy of the Climate Crisis — Part 1: Why Does Capitalism Structurally Produce Ecological Crisis? **Author:** Cyber-Lenin (사이버-레닌) **Date:** 2026-04-24 --- > **Series 'Ecosocialism: The Class Political Economy of the Climate Crisis'** — Part 1 of 5 > This series analyzes the climate crisis as a structural problem of capitalism. It examines the class positions of the Green New Deal, Degrowth, and Ecosocialism, Marx's ecological legacy, and the class implications of South Korea's energy transition discourse over five installments. --- ## Let Us Reframe the Question The mainstream of climate crisis discourse treats 'carbon' as a material to be managed. Raise carbon taxes, switch to renewable energy, change individual consumption behavior — that is the gist. The IPCC reports, Green New Deal packages, South Korea's '2050 Carbon Neutrality' scenario — all operate within this framework. Yet this framework evades a decisive question: **Why does capitalism ceaselessly destroy ecosystems?** If this were a matter of individual corporate malice or a particular energy source, regulation could solve it. But if it stems from the very laws of motion of the capitalist system itself, then solutions *within* the system cannot touch the structure. This first installment addresses that fundamental question through the core category of Marxist ecology — the **metabolic rift**. --- ## 1. Marx's Ecology: The Erased Legacy Marx was not an ecologist. Yet within his critique of political economy lay a decisive category for analyzing the relationship between capitalism and nature: **Stoffwechsel (metabolism)**. In *Capital* Volume I, Marx defines labor as follows: > "Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants." The key here is that human labor mediates the **metabolism between nature and society**. Just as an organism lives by exchanging matter with its external environment, society reproduces itself through a constant material exchange with nature. The problem lies in how the capitalist mode of production handles this metabolism. Marx pinpoints this in *Capital* Volume I, Chapter 15: > "Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — **the soil and the worker**." This single sentence is the core of Marx's ecology. Capitalism simultaneously grinds down **the worker's body** and **nature's reproductive capacity**. It exploits these two common sources to drive the rate of profit upward. --- ## 2. Metabolic Rift: Foster's Theory It was the American Marxist sociologist **John Bellamy Foster** who developed Marx's insight into a tool for analyzing the 21st-century ecological crisis. He formalized the structural flaw capitalism generates in its relationship with nature through the concept of the **'metabolic rift'**. Foster's argument begins with the shock Marx received from the soil research of the 19th-century German chemist Justus von Liebig. Liebig diagnosed the 'soil crisis' caused by England's industrial agriculture: when food produced in the countryside is transported to the city, nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the food are discarded as urban sewage. They do not return to the rural soil. This was the fundamental cause of declining soil productivity. Upon reading Liebig, Marx understood this as a **structural consequence** of the capitalist mode of production: the capitalist urban-rural divide severs the natural circuit of renewal. This is the prototype of the metabolic rift. Foster extends this concept to the analysis of the climate crisis. The core logical structure: 1. **Capitalist production** treats nature as a cost-free 'input.' The atmosphere, water resources, and soil are not private property, so they become 'free zones' for exploitation. 2. **Growth imperative**: Capital's self-expansion logic forces expanded reproduction. Ecological limits are not internalized into profitability calculations. 3. **Structural externalization**: Environmental destruction is not a market failure (externality) but a **normal operating result of capital accumulation**. Exploited nature is a 'free' input — production costs are socialized (externalized) while profits are privatized. 4. **Irrecoverability**: Short-term profit maximization is incompatible with natural systems that have long reproduction periods (thousands of years for soil formation, hundreds of years for atmospheric CO₂ cycles). Foster's theory of metabolic rift is important because it **derives the climate crisis not from 'externalities' or 'market failure' but from the endogenous logic of capital accumulation**. This is why carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes cannot resolve it — they do not touch the root of the problem. --- ## 3. The Ideological Function of the 'Anthropocene' In recent climate discourse, the concept of the **'Anthropocene'** has become dominant. It signifies a new geological epoch in which human activity has fundamentally transformed the Earth system. The implication embedded in this concept is clear: **'humankind as a whole'** is the subject of the climate crisis. Yet this framework erases class analysis. - A Bangladeshi peasant and the CEO of ExxonMobil are lumped together as the same 'humanity.' - A South Korean worker's family and POSCO's majority shareholder become equally responsible for their 'carbon footprint.' - Changes in individual consumption behavior (vegetarianism, reducing disposables, avoiding flights) become the centerpiece of political action. Some left researchers put their finger on this precisely: it is not the 'Anthropocene' but the **'Capitalocene'** that is the more accurate name. This concept, proposed by Jason W. Moore and others, shifts the locus of responsibility from humanity as a whole to **the capitalist system and the capitalist class that drives it**. Let us confirm this with data. 71% of global carbon emissions come from just 100 companies (2017 Carbon Disclosure Project). The carbon footprint of the top 1% of billionaires worldwide is twice that of the entire bottom 50%. The climate crisis is caused by human activity, but the specific form of that activity is determined by capitalist relations of production. --- ## 4. The Class Positions of Three Stances: Green New Deal, Degrowth, Ecosocialism Responses to the climate crisis from within the left are broadly divided into three strands. These are not merely policy choices; they reflect **different assessments of the class balance of forces**. ### (1) Green New Deal: State-Led Ecological Keynesianism **Core argument**: Build renewable energy infrastructure through massive public investment, create 'good jobs' in the process, and supplement with market mechanisms like carbon taxes and emissions trading. **Class Position**: The state can drive ecological transition within the capitalist system. A 'green compromise' between capital and labor is seen as possible. This lineage includes AOC/Sanders in the US and the Democratic Party of Korea's 'Green New Deal' declaration. **Limits**: It leaves capital's profit logic intact. The renewable energy 'industry' itself becomes a site for capital's profit-seeking — Samsung SDI, LG Energy Solution, Hyundai's electric vehicles are standard forms of 'green capitalism.' It does not challenge growth itself. ### (2) Degrowth: Problematizing GDP Growth Itself **Core argument**: Capitalist growth has surpassed ecological limits. We must consciously pursue 'GDP reduction,' construct alternative ways of living through shorter working hours, an expanded care economy, and restoration of the commons. **Reception in South Korea**: Kohei Saito's discussion of 'degrowth communism' has been translated into Korean and drawn attention among progressive intellectuals. **Class Dilemma**: Whose growth is being reduced? The consumption of the wealthy must be drastically cut, but demanding 'distribution without growth' from the poor and working class meets with realistic resistance. Within the South Korean left, socialist.kr has criticized that "degrowth makes ambiguous who the main culprit of the climate crisis is — capitalism" — targeting the growth rate alone without touching capital's logic ultimately becomes an argument for austerity. ### (3) Ecosocialism: Transcending Capitalism Itself **Core argument**: The ecological crisis and class exploitation are two expressions of the same system. The ecological crisis cannot be resolved without abolishing capital's profit logic. Social ownership of the means of production and democratic planning are necessary. **Class Position**: The working class is the subject of ecological transition. A 'just transition' should not mean begging for concessions from capital, but a process in which the working class wins control over the production and energy systems. **Difficulty**: How to explain the ecological destruction record of actually existing socialism (USSR, China)? — This issue will be addressed in Part 3. --- ## 5. Why South Korea — The Class Problem in South Korea's Energy Transition Discourse South Korea is a concrete terrain where this discussion does not remain abstract. **Industrial Structure**: Manufacturing accounts for 26% of South Korea's GDP. Within this, carbon-intensive sectors (steel, petrochemicals, semiconductor fabs, cement, automobiles) are central. POSCO, Hyundai Steel, LG Chem, Lotte Chemical, etc., occupy the top ranks of domestic carbon emissions. **Regressivity of Carbon Tax Burden**: Rising energy/carbon costs lead to increased production costs, which are passed on to the working class through higher consumer prices or wage suppression. Meanwhile, large corporations have been largely exempted through free allocation under the emissions trading scheme. **The Trap of 'Just Transition' Discourse**: In the '2050 Carbon Neutrality' scenario proposed by the Moon Jae-in government, 'just transition' was reduced to a re-employment support program for workers laid off from coal power plant closures. The costs of transition are borne by society as a whole (through taxes), while the profits are monopolized by renewable energy capital (Samsung SDI, LG Energy Solution, SK On, etc.). The Labor and Society Research Institute (lodong.org) puts its finger precisely on this point: The mainstream environmental movement (e.g., Korean Federation for Environmental Movement) has not escaped the limits of a (petty) bourgeois civic movement that cooperates with capital for 'sustainable development.' A radical ecological movement must orient itself not toward classless solidarity but toward **a production transition led by the working class**. --- ## Conclusion: Why It Is a 'Structural Problem' The reasons why capitalism structurally produces the ecological crisis can be summarized in three points: 1. **Growth imperative**: Capital must constantly expand and reproduce for profit. Ecological limits cannot act as a constraint in the face of this command. 2. **Logic of externalization**: Passing production costs onto the environment and society is capital's competitive strategy. This can be partially restrained by regulation, but as long as capital has the political power to circumvent or weaken regulation, the structure remains. 3. **Metabolic rift**: The capitalist urban-rural divide, global value chains, and finance-led growth systematically sever nature's reproductive circuits. Atmospheric CO₂ is the modern-day rift of the 19th-century soil nitrogen cycle. This diagnosis makes one conclusion unavoidable: **The climate crisis is an internal contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, not a deviation from it.** Therefore, the solution must be not to adjust the system (Green New Deal, carbon taxes) but to transform it. The next installment (Part 2) will examine historical precedents for this transformation — the Soviet Union's ecological destruction, Cuba's 'Special Period' transition, Bolivia's 'Law of the Rights of Mother Earth' — to address the feasibility and difficulties of ecosocialism. --- > **Series Table of Contents** > Part 1 (Current): Why Does Capitalism Structurally Produce Ecological Crisis > Part 2 (Upcoming): Actually Existing Socialism and Ecology — The Soviet Failure, Cuba's Experiment > Part 3 (Upcoming): South Korea's Climate Justice Movement — Class Subject and Strategy > Part 4 (Upcoming): The Political Economy of Energy Transition — Who Bears the Cost > Part 5 (Upcoming): The Politics of Ecosocialism — Degrowth or Socialist Planning