“When we look at the real history of the emergence of ecological thinking and science, there can be little doubt that Marxists and socialists were forerunners of it. They were many of the principal figures in the development of ecological thought and science. So the notion that socialists came to this field late is completely mistaken – it’s almost the exact opposite of the true history.”
Politics in the Zeros
"A republic, if you can keep it." Defeat MAGA
Politics in the Zeros
"A republic, if you can keep it." Defeat MAGA
My conservative New England forebears were conserving resources 200 years before Marx was born. But more recently, in the early 1800s, the environmental movement was begun by Emerson and Thoreau (Hindu-influenced transcendentalists) in the early 1800s, and John Muir (a Scot who traveled to America and was influenced by those aforementioned conservatives) in the mid-1800s. There were also several pre-Marxist socialist Christian sects that had an awareness of environmentalism as part of spirituality. All these schools of thought opposed the industrial exploitation of resources and environment.
Marx may be the root of European environmentalism, but America already had its own home-grown version, long before Marx-based socialism arrived.