Environmental Ethics

Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 1981

Karl Marx, Alienation, and the Mastery of Nature

Donald Lee’s account in “The Marxian View” is inaccurate in asserting the centrality of an abstract conception of alienation based on a speculattve understanding of human nature. This was precisely the view rejected by Marx in 1845. The development of Marx’s materialist conception of human nature is traced in order to show the importance to his analysis of the forces and relations of production. Some specific difficulties in Lee’s account are discussed, and the broad implications of Marxist theory regarding environmental problems and the mastery of nature are presented.