Liebig, Marx, and the depletion of soil fertility: relevance for today's agriculture - German chemist Justus von Liebig; Karl Marx

Monthly Review, July-August, 1998 by John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff

From a longer-term perspective, it is important to understand that neither a lack of technology nor a lack of understanding of ecological processes are standing in the way of sustainable agricultural systems today. Although there is plenty to find out, we already know how to design and implement agroecosystems that are biologically sustainable, taking into account soil nutrient cycles and other factors. But the mass of farmers cannot use this knowledge and survive under the current economic-social-political structure.

A humane and sustainable system, socialist and based on sound ecological principles, will concern itself with sustaining the earth, as Marx wrote, "as the inalienable condition for the existence and reproduction of the chain of human generations." To fail to take these more fundamental issues into account in our current struggles would be to ensure our failure not only in the cause of social justice, but also in fulfilling our obligations to the earth - understood as the ground we live on and the bio-geological processes that sustain us. One thing we can be assured of: future generations will only look at us askance if we allow ourselves to give in at any point to a system, such as the present one, run on the principle "Apres moi le deluge!"(1)

NOTES

1. "Apres moi le deluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Capital therefore takes no account of the health and length of life of the worker, unless society forces it to do so." Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1976), p, 381.