Fortschrittsglaube und Ökologie im Denken von Marx und Engels
Belief in Progress and Ecology in the Thought of Marx and Engels

Summary/Abstract: Marx and Engels acknowledged the progressive character of the capitalist mode of production and analyzed the harmful effects of technological progress under capitalist conditions. Although Marx and Engels emphasized the significance of technical innovations in the development of productive forces as well as the ways in which they contributed to the increasing contradictions within capitalism, they were equally aware of the dangers that new technology (introduced to maximize production) entailed for human beings and nature. The possibility that "progress" might become barbarism was familiar to them. They stressed the necessity of a scientific planning of production that would conserve the environment and thereby avoid the destruction of human life. This aspect of Marx's analysis of capitalism was almost totally ignored by Lenin and his successors in the course of constructing the economic base in the Soviet Union. A similar attitude in the West was taken by members of the Second International, and is perpetuated by Marxists like Althusser who fails to acknowledge the dialectical relationship between an increased rate of production and heightened destruction and alienation.

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