2619. Beauty and Evolution of Birds

By James Gorman, The New York Times, May 29, 2017

A male pheasant courting a female.

Not long ago, a physicist at Stanford posed a rhetorical question that took me by surprise.

“Why is there so much beauty?” he asked.

Beauty was not what I was thinking the world was full of when he brought it up. The physicist, Manu Prakash, was captivated by the patterns in seawater made as starfish larvae swam about. But he did put his finger on quite a puzzle: Why is there beauty? Why is there any beauty at all?

Richard O. Prum, a Yale ornithologist and evolutionary biologist, offers a partial answer in a new book, “The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us.” He writes about one kind of beauty — the oh-is-he/she-hot variety — and mostly as it concerns birds, not people. And his answer is, in short: That’s what female birds like.

This won’t help with understanding the appeal of fluid dynamics or the night sky, but Dr. Prum is attempting to revive and expand on a view that Charles Darwin held, one that sounds revolutionary even now.

The idea is that when they are choosing mates — and in birds it’s mostly the females who choose — animals make choices that can only be called aesthetic. They perceive a kind of beauty. Dr. Prum defines it as “co-evolved attraction.” They desire that beauty, often in the form of fancy feathers, and their desires change the course of evolution.

All biologists recognize that birds choose mates, but the mainstream view now is that the mate chosen is the fittest in terms of health and good genes. Any ornaments or patterns simply reflect signs of fitness. Such utility is objective. Dr. Prum’s — and Darwin’s — notion of beauty is something more subjective, with no other meaning than its aesthetic appeal.

Dr. Prum wants to push evolutionary biologists to re-examine their assumptions about utility and beauty, objectivity and subjectivity. But he also wants to reach the public with a message that is clear whether or not you dip into the technical aspects of evolution. The yearning to pick your own mate is not something that began with humans, he says. It can be found in ducks, pheasants and other creatures.

“Freedom of choice matters to animals,” he said recently on a birding trip to a beach near his office in New Haven. “We’ve been explaining away desire rather than actually trying to understand or explain it. That’s one of the biggest shifts that the book is about.”

The book ranges from hard science to speculation, and he does not expect his colleagues to agree with him on all of his ideas. In fact, he gets a twinkle in his eye when he anticipates intellectual conflict.

“I don’t know anybody who actually agrees with me,” he said with a frank smile.

“Even my own students aren’t there yet.”

To grasp his view, a little bit of history is in order. Darwin famously proposed the idea of evolution by natural selection, what is often called survival of the fittest. To put it simply, living things vary in their inherited traits, from speed to color to sense of smell. The traits of the individuals who survive longer and have the most offspring become more common. So, over time, the faster antelope have more young, the fastest of them have more offspring, and antelope end up very speedy.

But reproduction isn’t just about surviving and staying healthy long enough to mate. You have to find a mate. And in many species, your mate must choose you. This process is sexual selection. Female birds are often the ones choosing. And their choices can produce male birds that are incredibly colorful, and some that are elaborate dancers or designers of striking boudoirs — like the bower birds. If, for example, females like males with long tails, then long-tailed males have more offspring, and the longest-tailed of those offspring reproduce more. In the end, that species becomes known for its long tails.

Maydianee Andrade, an evolutionary biologist and vice dean at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, who studies sexual selection and teaches evolution, said that “the question is basically this. You can think of females when they are choosing a mate as foraging. So what are they looking for?”

“If you’re dragging a giant tail behind you, that might tell the female something,” she said. “A male that survives carrying a large heavy tail is more impressive than a male that survives with a short tail.”

But survival might not have anything to do with it. Some female finches use white feathers to line their nest, perhaps to camouflage white eggs. In one experiment, they also liked males with white feathers stuck on their heads better than other males. This seemed to be an aesthetic choice, and also proved that there is no accounting for taste.

Darwin contended that selection-based mate choice was different from natural selection because the females were often making decisions based on what looked good — on beauty, as they perceived it — and not on survival or some objective quality like speed or strength. Scientists of that era reacted negatively, partly because of the emphasis on females. “Such is the instability of vicious feminine caprice that no constancy of coloration could be produced by its selective action,” wrote St. George Jackson Mivart, an English biologist who was at first a great supporter and later a critic of natural selection.

Alfred Russell Wallace, who came up with the theory of evolution at the same time as Darwin, preferred the idea that the colors and patterns meant something — either they were signs that this was a male of the right species, or they indicated underlying fitness. Perhaps only a strong, healthy male could support such a big, beautiful tail.

At the very birth of evolutionary theory, scientists were arguing about how sexual selection worked. And they kept at it, through the discovery of genes and many other advances.

Fast forward to the 1980s, when Dr. Prum was in graduate school at the University of Michigan, sharing an office with Geoffrey Hill, now a professor at Auburn University.

At that time, mainstream evolutionary thought took a big swing toward the idea that ornaments and fancy feathers were indications of underlying fitness. “Animals with the best ornamentation were the best males,” Dr. Hill said. This was called “honest signaling” of underlying genetic fitness. The idea, he said, “almost completely ran over what was the old idea of beauty.”

Dr. Hill, for one, was completely convinced. “I was pretty sure I could explain all ornaments in all animals as honest signaling.” But, he added, he has since reconsidered. There are some extreme forms of ornamentation that he thinks don’t signal anything, but rather are a result of the kind of process Dr. Prum favors.

“You can’t explain a peacock’s tail with honest signaling,” Dr. Hill said.

But, he said, he thought Dr. Prum had taken an important idea and gotten “a little bit carried away with it.” The book, he said, “was a great read, and I could tell he put his heart and soul into it.” But, he said, he found it “scientifically disappointing.”

Darwin himself, Dr. Hill said, “was completely unsatisfied with his work on sexual selection.” And the mainstream of evolutionary biology is not hostile to a partial role for arbitrary female choice. Dr. Hill has recently argued for combining several different processes to explain sexual selection.

Dr. Prum is indeed given to enthusiasm, and to intellectual contention. He has been on the winning side of initially unpopular ideas before.

As a graduate student, he sided with researchers who wanted to change the way animals are classified, to emphasize their evolutionary descent. The new idea was called cladistics and it is now the established idea. He has done groundbreaking research on both the physical structure and the evolution of feathers, and he was an early supporter of the notion that birds descended from dinosaurs, another new idea that is now the mainstream view.

In neither case was he a lone voice. But he is nothing if not confident, and not only in his science. Take the question of pizza.

In New Haven, pizza is something akin to a religion, and there are different sects. When I asked Dr. Prum who makes the best pizza in town, thinking he would pick one of the rival pizzerias, he didn’t hesitate.

“I do,” he said. He uses an outdoor grill with a special attachment, and he described his pursuit of the perfect pizza in some detail. When I raised an eyebrow he offered me a reference, a friend and writer who had consumed the Prum pies.

He also acknowledged that he approaches many things with single-minded intensity.

“I’m given to obsessions,” he said. Bird watching was the first and most long-lasting. Evolutionary biology may be the deepest. Cooking, opera, gardening and politics (left-wing) are others.

He has disagreed with the dominant view of sexual selection since graduate school and sees his new book, which he hopes will reach beyond scientists, as a kind of manifesto. It has too many parts to summarize. He takes a chapter, for instance, to speculate that same-sex attraction in humans evolved in our ancestors through female choices that undermine male sexual coercion. For a full account, you need to read the book.

But one particular aspect of his argument is his distress at the idea that almost all evolutionary change is assumed to be adaptive, contributing to fitness. In other words, if a fish is blue, it must be blue for a reason. The color must help it escape predators or sneak up on prey, or be otherwise useful in some way. Beauty, therefore, must be adaptive, or a sign of underlying qualities that are adaptive. Pick a behavior or an ornament or a physical trait, and it is useful until proven otherwise.

That’s backward, says Dr. Prum. Take beauty. Since animals have aesthetic preferences and make choices, beauty will inevitably appear. “Beauty happens,” as he puts it, and it should be taken as nonadaptive until proven otherwise.

In proposing this so-called “null hypothesis,” he draws on the work of Mark A. Kirkpatrick at the University of Texas, Austin, who studies population genetics, genomics and evolutionary theory and had read parts of “The Evolution of Beauty.”

“I’m very impressed that Rick is taking on this crusade,” Dr. Kirkpatrick said. He is not convinced that all aspects of sexual selection are based on arbitrary choices for perceived beauty, but, he said, if Dr. Prum can convince some other scientists to question their assumptions, “he will do a great service.”

For Dr. Prum, at least, there is a partial answer to the question posed by Dr. Prakash. Why are birds beautiful.

“Birds are beautiful because they’re beautiful to themselves.”

2038. Darwinian Natural Section: Individual vs. Group Selection

By Steve Mirsky, Scientific American, December 18, 2008

Want to start a brawl at an evolution conference? Just bring up the concept of group selection: the idea that one mixed bag of individuals can be “selected” as a group over other heterogeneous groups from the same species. Biologists who would not hesitate to form a group themselves to combat creationism or intelligent design might suddenly start a pie fight to defend the principle that “it’s every man for himself.”

Yet Charles Darwin himself argued for group selection. He postulated that moral men might not do any better than immoral men but that tribes of moral men would certainly “have an immense advantage” over fractious bands of pirates. By the 1960s, however, selection at the group level was on the outs. Influential theorist George Williams acknowledged that although group selection might be possible, in real life “group-related adaptations do not, in fact, exist.”

Richard Dawkins of the University of Cambridge, whose writings have reached millions, maintains that selection might not even reach such a high level of biological organization as the individual organism. Instead, he claims, selection operates on genes—the individual is the embodiment of the selection of thousands of selfish genes, each trying to perpetuate itself.

In the past few decades, however, group selection has made a quiet comeback among evolutionary theorists. E. O. Wilson of Harvard University and David Sloan Wilson (no relation) of Binghamton University are trying to give group selection full-fledged respectability. They are rebranding it as multilevel selection theory: selection constantly takes place on multiple levels simultaneously. And how do you figure the sum of those selections in any real-world circumstance? “We simply have to examine situations on a case-by-case basis,” Sloan Wilson says.

But the Wilsons did offer some guidelines in the December 2007 issue of Quarterly Review of Biology. “Adaptation at any level,” they write, “requires a process of natural selection at the same level, and tends to be undermined by natural selection at lower levels.”

Experiments with actual groups illustrate the point. Pseudomonas fluorescens bacteria quickly suck all the dissolved oxygen out of a liquid habitat, leaving a thin habitable layer near the surface. But some bacteria spontaneously develop a beneficial mutation. These group-saving individuals secrete a polymer that enables bunches of individuals to form floating mats. As a mat, all the bacteria survive, even though most of them expend no metabolic energy producing the polymer. But if the freeloaders get greedy and reproduce too many of their kind, the mat sinks and everybody dies, altruists and freeloaders alike. Among these bacteria, then, groups that maintain enough altruists to float outcompete groups with fewer altruists than that minimum number. The former groups survive, grow and split up into daughter groups. Thus, altruistic individuals can prosper, despite the disadvantage of expending precious resources to produce the polymer.

Perhaps the biggest change that group selection brings to evolutionary theory is its implication for so-called kin selection. What looks like group selection, some theorists argue, can actually be understood as genetic relatedness. Evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane pithily explained kin selection: “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.” In this view, altruistic bacteria in the Pseudomonas mats are saving close relatives, thereby ensuring the survival of most of the genes they themselves also carry.

Turning that argument on its head, the Wilsons assert that kin selection is a special case of group selection. “The importance of kinship,” they note, “is that it increases genetic variation among groups.” The individuals within any one group are much more like one another and much less like the individuals in any other group. And that diversity between groups presents clearer choices for group selection. Kinship thus accentuates the importance of selection at the group level as compared with individual selection within the group.

The Wilsons think evolutionists must embrace multilevel selection to do fruitful research in sociobiology—“the study of social behavior from a biological perspective.” When doing so, other investigators can keep in mind the Wilsons’ handy rule of thumb: “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups.”

2037. Richard Lewontin: What Is Evolutionary Theory?

By Richard C. Lewontin, Santa Fe Institute, May 11, 2012

2025. Video: Edward O. Wilson on "The Meaning of Human Existence"

By Edward O. Wilson, Town Hall Seattle, December 4, 2014

Conversation with E. O.Wilson begins after the first 6 minutes of the video clip.  

1570. Evolution: Survival of the Fittest Group in Spiders Observed in Nature

By Science Daily, October 1, 2014

Tiny Anelosimus spiders may have a huge story to tell about evolution. Photo: Judy Gallagher

Along rivers in Tennessee and Georgia, scientists have been studying brownish-orange spiders, called Anelosimus studiosus, that make cobwebby nests "anywhere from the size of a golf ball to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle," researcher Jonathan Pruitt says. The individual spiders are only the size of a pencil eraser, but they form organized groups that can catch prey ranging from fruit flies to small vertebrates. "We have found carcasses of rats and birds inside their colonies," Pruitt says. Unlike most spiders, which are solitary, these social spiders work together in groups.

Now new research shows that they evolve together in groups, too.

Say "group selection" among some groups of evolutionary biologists and you won't be invited back to the party. But Jonathan Pruitt, at the University of Pittsburgh, and Charles Goodnight, at the University of Vermont, have been studying generations of these Anelosimus spiders -- and have gathered the first-ever experimental evidence that group selection can fundamentally shape collective traits in wild populations.

Their results are presented in the Oct. 1 online edition of the journal Nature.

"Biologists have never shown an adaptation in nature which is clearly attributable to group selection," Goodnight said. "Our paper is that demonstration."

Darwin's questions
In his 1859 masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin puzzled over how ants could -- generation after generation -- produce workers that would serve the colony -- but were sterile. Evolution by natural selection has often been understood to work at the level of the organism: the traits of an individual determine whether it will survive and reproduce. How could these sterile ants persist in nature, he wondered, if they didn't reproduce?
"This difficulty, though appearing insuperable, is lessened, or, as I believe disappears, when it is remembered that selection may be applied to the family, as well as to the individual." In other words, evolution by natural selection, Darwin thought, could operate at numerous levels, including groups: "A tribe including many members," Darwin wrote in Descent of Man, who were able to "sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection."

But the idea that natural selection can operate on groups, and can produce group-level adaptations, has been under siege in a philosophical and semantic war among biologists since the 1960s. Though group selection has been fraught with controversy and confusion for decades, the fundamental idea is plain: in groups of plants or societies of animals where an individual's fitness is tightly tied to the performance of its group, evolution will favor traits that help increase the group's success. These traits, in turn, will increase the individual's long-term evolutionary success.

On farms, group selection has been clearly observed to succeed. There, breeders are more successful when they select among entire cages for groups of hens that produce the most eggs -- rather than selecting individually productive birds. All the birds in cages that produce lots of eggs -- regardless of which individuals are doing the egg-laying -- get to reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation. Those in low-producing cages, even if there are a few star birds in the mix, go to the slaughterhouse.

Still, a prominent group of biologists has long argued that "the conditions enabling group selection to be a potent evolutionary force essentially never occur in nature," notes an essay that accompanies the new Nature study.

Spider personalities
Pruitt and Goodnight's study of spiders shows that a group-level adaptation -- a critical ratio of two types of females -- is, in fact, a potent evolutionary force in nature. Female spiders in Anelosimus colonies fall into one of two categories of behavior: "aggressive" or "docile." In places with lots of resources for these spiders, the scientists observe that small colonies are dominated by docile females. As the colonies grow bigger, so does the frequency of aggressive females. In these places, as the colony grows, social parasites may be the biggest threat to their long-term survival, and aggressive females prove useful.

But in places with limited resources, the opposite happens: small colonies are dominated by aggressive females and the docile variety appears more frequently as the colonies grow. In these places, egg cannibalism by aggressive females may be a primary threat to survival.
In any case, what the scientists show in their study is that this shifting ratio -- a collective trait of a whole colony -- is adapted to specific locations. "Certain ratios yield high survivorship at some sites, but not others," the new study notes. So, when native colonies were perturbed -- their docile-to-aggressive ratios thrown out of whack -- they, somehow, sensed this as an extinction risk, and, over several generations, readjusted their ratio back to normal. Remarkably, when artificially assembled colonies were placed in new locations, the spiders -- over two generations -- attempted to recreate the composition of docile-to-aggressive spiders that would be ideal in their home conditions -- where the colony evolved -- even if the environmental conditions at the new location were different.

"They're continuing to make the phenotypes, the trait at a group level, that would have been advantageous if they had stayed home," Pruitt says, "But they seem to have no idea that they're at a new site and that what they're doing is going to doom the whole colony. All the friends die."

"Our observation that groups matched their compositions to the one optimal at their site of origin (regardless of their current habitat) is particularly important," Pruitt and Goodnight write, "given that many respected researchers have argued that group selection cannot lead to group adaptation except in clonal groups and that group selection theory is inefficient and bankrupt."

Wild evidence
"Group selection has become a scientific dust bunny, a hairy blob in which anything having to do with 'groups' clings to anything having to do with 'selection,'" famed Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in a 2012 attack on group selection. And clearly, the naïve 1960s view that, say, a bird could choose to not reproduce for the good of its fellow birds, or that lemmings toss themselves suicidally off cliffs to alleviate overcrowding, has been wholly discredited. "Biology doesn't work that way," Charles Goodnight says.
Yet, a flock of birds turns together. Ants build bridges with their bodies. Monkeys organize into treetop societies warning each other of approaching foes. Social animals succeed in nature because they have unique and powerful group traits that individual organisms can't have. Organisms' relatedness is part of the explanation for these social and cooperative behaviors. That is, because kin have shared genes, it can mean that helping your sisters is helping yourself. The empirical evidence that Jonathan Pruitt and Charles Goodnight have gathered and analyzed about Anelosimus spiders points to a mechanism that complements, but extends beyond, the scientific orthodoxy of "kin selection." Their field study shows natural selection working on a collective trait -- the docile-to-aggressive ratio, known to pass down from generation to generation -- that has led to an adaptation that determines whether whole colonies survive or die. In other words: group selection observed in the wild.

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Vermont. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Jonathan N. Pruitt, Charles J. Goodnight. Site-specific group selection drives locally adapted group compositions. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13811

1417. On the Population Question: Malthus, Marx and Beyond

By Kamran Nayeri, May 18, 2014

1. Introduction 
It is estimated that the world population reached one billion in 1804. It took 123 years before it reached two billions in 1927.  By 1960 it reached 3 billions, only 33 years later.  Thereafter the world population reached 4 billions in 1974, 5 billions in 1987, 6 billions in 1999 and 7 billions in 2012.  It is projected that the world will have around 9 billions by 2050.  The massive increase in the population has been combined with a rise in the real per capita GDP.  The  ratio of real GDP in 1995 to 1950 was 3.1 in the “more developed areas” with 20% of the world population and 2.9 in the “less developed areas” with 80% of the world population. (“The Worldwide Standard of Living Since 1800”, Table 3, Richard E. Easterlin, Journal of Economic Perspective, volume 14, Number 1—Winter 2000—pp. 7–26). Some 20% of the world population, mostly in the industrial capitalist countries, consume 80% of the wold GDP.  Meanwhile, 2.8 billion people struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and more than one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water. The U.N. reports that 825 million people are still undernourished; the average person in the industrial world took in 10 percent more calories daily in 1961 than the average person in the developing world consumes today  (The State of World Consumption, World Watch Institute, accessed May 13, 2014).

In a planet with finite resources, clearly there is a “population problem.” A large section of the environmentalist and ecologist movements and some ecological socialist believe this population problem was first analyzed incisively by Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus among the notable English classical political economists more than 200 years ago.  Among the same milieu it is common to mock Karl Marx’s critique of Malthus’ theory.   In what follows, I will argue that this common belief is false and it is at best based on inadequate knowledge of these writers.  In particular, I will focus on the claim of my ecological socialist fellow Saral Sarkar who believes “Malthus was right” and “Marx was wrong” on the population question.   As some readers know, this writing is part of my discussion of Saral’s recent writings regarding causes of the Great Recession.  In these (as well as earlier writings), Saral has displayed increasing hostility to Marx.  While critical appropriation of any thinker’s contributions is a welcome method of developing new ideas or extending earlier ones, hostility (being critical without due process) is an impediment to progress. Thus, it is alarming to me that Saral in his recent essay treats U.S. President Barack Obama and former Vice President Al Gore with more respect than he accords to Marx and in his letter he accuses Marx of being “biased” and “wrong” without any serious examination of the issues involved. 

In what follows, I will briefly take up Saral’s accusation that Marx was “biased’ in developing his labor theory of value and then in more detail discuss Saral’s preference for Malthus against Marx in discussing the population question. 

2. Was Marx biased in developing his labor theory of value?
In his letter, Saral writes: “I have shown [in Crises of Capitalism, 2010] with a quote from George Caffentzis that Marx was biased when he set up the labor theory of value.”  George Caffentzis is a professor of political philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, United States.  Here is the quotation from a chapter he wrote entitled “”Why Machines Cannot Create Value; or, Marx’s Theory of Machines,” for an edited collection called Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism and Social Revolution (1997).

“Marx’s theory of machines was deployed in a political struggle; it was not the result of some supra historical, a-prioristic ratiocination. Theoretically, Marx could have taken different paths in the understanding of machines and still remained anti-capitalist. For example, he could have argued that machines create value but this value was the product of a general social and scientific labor which ought not be appropriated by the capitalist class.  Such as approach was indeed taken up by Veblen and others in the early twentieth century….

“Marx’s theoretical choice against the value creativity of machines was rooted in the complex political situation he and his faction of the working class movement of Western Europe faced…

“In the face of the ideological attack arising from the depth of the system [namely, the machines create value; workers are not so important], Marx needed a direct reply. It was to point out that…for all the thunder of its steam hammers, for all the intimating silence of its chemical plants, capital could not dispense with labor. Labor is not the only source of wealth, but it is the only source of value. Thus, capital was mortally tied to the working class, whatever the forces that it unleashed that were driving to a form of labor-less production. This was the political card that Marx played in the political game against the ideological suffocation of the machine. It…proved to be a useful one not only in the struggle of the 1860s. (cited in Sarkar, Crises of Capitalism, 2010, p. xxi). 

But above text does not substantiate Saral’s blunt statement that that “Marx was biased.” First, what Caffentiz says is that Marx’s labor theory of value was a response to ideological attacks by proponents of the capitalist system that “machines create value; workers are not important.”  Clearly in the extreme Cafentiz’s view can be interpreted as Marx was partisan in developing his labor theory of value.  There is a world of difference between being partisan and being biased.  However, there is nothing new or surprising about Marx being partisan. Everyone knows that Marx was a champion of the working class from early in his adult life. Does this make his labor theory of value biased and wrong? As I have already shown in Are Paradigms, Theories, Methods Value Neutral? nobody who thinks and acts socially is value neutral.  So, why mock Marx? 

Second, as Caffentiz correctly says (and Saral somehow misses), Marx’s labor theory of value originated in earlier theories developed by the classical political economists from John Locke to Adam Smith and Ricardo.  So, Marx’s labor theory of value was not in Caffentiz own words “some supra historical, a-prioristic ratiocination” creation.  That is, it was not arbitrary and therefore could not be “biased.” Marx merely went further and deeper that even Ricardo ever did as we know from my discussion of commodity and money in Marx or Club of Rome.  Marx’s labor theory of value is about human alienation in the capitalist society that makes the rule of capital and exploitation of labor possible. It is the application of his historical materialist method for the understanding the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production. In this, Marx has no parallel and anyone interested to transcending the capitalist civilization would need to read and understand Marx.  

Third, Caffentzis's statement that Marx did not think that machines contribute value to the product is based on a misunderstanding of his theory.  In Marx’s theory, capital that include machinery is “dead labor.”  “Dead labor” is value created by workers in earlier phases of production.  Thus, in Chapter 10 of volume one of Capital, “The Working Day,” Marx writes: 

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.”

Thus, Marx does account for value contributed by “machines” as labor expanded in earlier phases of production. The idea that machines can create value independent of human beings is an alienated (bourgeois) notion.  It took root in the neoclassical marginal productivity theory. In Economics, Socialism and Ecology: An Outline, Part 1 I summarized it as follows:

“Soon, John Bates Clark (American) and Phillip Henry Wicksteed (Swedish) developed the marginal productivity theory as the neoclassical theory of income distribution according to which wages, profit and rent were paid according to the contribution of last unit of their input.  Thus, wages due to workers are paid to them no less and no more than their contribution.  The same applied to profits and rents. Thus, economic justice was served in the capitalist market economy.”

Thus, neoclassical theory cut loose from the ideologically dangerous labor theory of value, not of Marx but also of classical political economy. The fact that neoclassical theory is the dominant economic doctrine of our time indicates that the notion that capital in general and machines in particular create value is in fact part of the mainstream ideology that serves the interest of the ruling class.  

Given the ahistorical nature of the neoclassical theory, it is fair to imagine a future world where robots make everything but there are no humans.  The question is: do they create value?  Likewise, imagine a society where robots make every thing (perhaps a strange view of a socialist society).  Is there value being created by the robots?  From Marx’s perspective, the answer would clearly be “no.”  Value is a social relation particular to the capitalist mode of production. It is obviously Caffentzis's or Saral’s choice to define value different from the way Marx used the term. Then they would have to develop an entire theory of capitalism that is different from Marx’s.  We do not know what that theory would be. But to denounce Marx for not defining value in the way neoclassical theory or Veblen defined it is simply not scholarship.  

3. Was Marx wrong about Malthus?
Advising me in his letter not to characterize neoclassical economics as bourgeois, Saral writes: “There are many bourgeois theorists who have thought and worked honestly. Bourgeois Malthus was right, while Marxist Marx was wrong.”  What is this about?  What was “Marxist” Marx wrong about and bourgeois Malthus who “thought and worked honestly” correct about?  I along with other readers would have no clue.  

So, I had to turn to Saral’s Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism for a clue. 

In his “Introduction,” Saral initiates a discussion about paradigm shift to motivate limits to growth as an alternative and superior paradigm to “Marxism.”  Never mind that lumping all kinds of theories and theorists and historical experience of parties and states that have called themselves “Marxism” is mistake as I briefly discuss in the first endnote below.  Also, never mind that limits to growth and Marx’s theory operate on entirely different planes: the first is about limits of planetary systems supporting human societies and the other is about the historical dynamics of class societies and potential for human emancipation.  They are not contradictory and in my reading of them they can be made complementary in search for a solution to the crisis of the bourgeois culture and society.  Saral then uses a 1979 article of Paul Sweezy’s entitled “A Crisis in Marxian Theory” to make a case for the crisis of “Marxist paradigm" and the superiority of the “limits to growth paradigm.”  

It is in this context that Saral introduces Malthus.  He writes:

“Marx and Engels were not aware of the limits to growth. Although Malthus had dealt in 18th century with the population problem in relation to the growth of food production—an important aspect of limits-to-growth paradigm—Marx and Engels and all their disciples vehemently rejected his theory.” (Sarkar, 1999, p. 18)

Therefore, for Saral Malthus is an early proponent of limits to growth whereas Marx and Engels who actually began their active intellectual and political life after Malthus’ death in 1834 were opponents of Malthus’ theory of population, hence the early limits to growth thinking.  

But was Malthus’s theory of population an early formulation of natural limits to growth? There were others with similar ideas that predated Malthus.  In what sense Malthus’ theory of population is unique or superior to his predecessors? Why these ideas emerged over 200 years ago?  Was there a “population problem” in England, Western Europe or the world? 

Saral does not deal with any of these key questions. His discussion of Malthus’ population theory appears in a short section entitled “Malthus: the Difference Between Problem and Policy” on pages 130-31.  He frames the discussion as follows:

“We must begin with Malthus. We must differentiate between problem and policy. Population policy can be debated, formulated, and accepted or rejected. But the population problem is an objective state of affairs, which cannot be conjured away.”  (ibid., p. 130)

He continues:

“The indignation against Malthus is justified. According to him, the poor are themselves to be blamed for their poverty.  But the question is whether for this reason, Malthus’ presentation of the problem is also wrong.” (ibid.)

Strangely enough Saral leave his own question unanswered.  Of course, indignation against Malthus is justified. All his life he stood against all reforms to alleviate the horrendous condition of the British working class, especially the poor.  He was a staunch representative of the most reactionary section of the English propertied classes.  But how about Malthus’ presentation of the problem?  Did England of 200 years ago have a population problem that threatened “the delicate ecological balance” (in Saral’s own words) or was there a shortage of available food supply to feed everyone?  Saral does not take up these self-evident questions. Instead, he fast forwards to the post-World War II period to discuss a few studies about population pressure on food supply.  Nothing about what Malthus actually said and its context or what Marx’s criticism of Malthus was.

For answer to these question we need to go to sources outside of Saral’s book.  And there is a large literature on this question. For this rejoined it suffice to look at a few of them.  

4. The historical context of Malthus’ theories
Theories of society must be placed in their historical context. The historical fact is that there was no “population problem” in England or Western Europe or the world that anyone argued will undermine “the delicate ecological balance” and there was no argument that there was not enough food to feed everyone.  During Malthus’ own life agricultural revolution was underway from 1750 to 1850 when growth of food production exceeded population growth and Britain reached 5.5 million people for the first time.  Also, the development of the field of ecology was some decades in the future. 

However, the English working class was living at subsistence in 1750 and in the second half of the eighteenth century as the industrialization got underway  “…their standard of living (measured in terms of the purchasing power of wages) deteriorated…” (E. K. Hunt, History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective, 1979, p. 57).   “…[T]here is no doubt that the standard of living of the poor fell precipitously in relation to the standards of the middle and upper classes” throughout the industrial revolution.  Workers were uprooted from their traditional means of living in handicrafts and agriculture and forced to migrate to cities. Community relations were being ruptured and replaced with market relations and the cash nexus. Monotonous  factory system of production dehumanized workers making them mere extension of machines. “Children were bound to factories by indentures of apprenticeship for seven years, or until they were 21 years old.” (ibid., p. 59). They “endured the cruelest servitude.” (ibid.).  They were isolated and forced to work 14 to 18 hours a day or until they dropped from complete exhaustion. There were many factory “accidents” and many children were dismembered.  “Women were mistreated almost a severely.” (Ibid.).  Conditions in the cities were terrible. 

This led to factory revolts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as bands of workers smashed machines in factories. Theses revolts that became known as the Luddie revolts, ended in 1813 when large number of workers were hanged or deported for their protests. Social riots occurred in 1811-13, 1815—17, 1819, 1826, 1929-35, 1834-1842, 1843-1844, 1846-1848.  As labor organizations spread in reaction to these conditions in the 1790s, the Combination Act of 1799 was adopted which “…outlawed any combination of workers whose purpose was to obtain higher wages, shorter hours, or the introduction of any regulation constraining the free action of their employers..”  (ibid. p. 61). The proponents of laissez-faire capitalism campaigned for the abolition of the Speenhamland system of poor relief that had come into existence due to the Christian paternalist ethics. 

This is the context in which Robert Malthus wrote his many books, pamphlets, and essays.  As E. K. Hunt writes:

“Malthus was an outspoke champion of the wealthy, and his theory of population provided the framework within which he defended them.  In 1798 he published An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers , generally referred to as the first Essay on the Principle of Population. In 1803, he published a revised edition in which the revisions were so extensive that it was, in reality, a new book.  This book is generally referred to as the second Essay on the Principle of Population.  He later published A Summary of the Principles of Population.” (ibid., p. 63)  

5. Malthus’ early theory of population
The ecological socialist John Bellamy Foster wrote an essay in 1998 (a year before Saral’s Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism was published) entitled  “Malthus’ Essay on Population at Age 200: A Marxist View”.  Foster’s essay is remarkable for his debunking a number of myths about Malthus’s population theory.  

Much of what goes as Malthus’ theory of population was actually developed by earlier writers.  Specifically Malthus’ first Essay on the Principle of Population was his attempt to intervene in a debate between Robert Wallace, an Edinburg minister, and William Godwin and Marquis de Condorcet.  In 1761, Wallace published Various Prospects for Mankind, Nature, and Providence. He argued that 

“…human population if unchecked tended to increase exponentially, doubling every few decades, made a case in Various Prospects that while the creation of a ‘perfect government,’ organized on an egalitarian basis was conceivable, it would be at best temporary, since under these circumstances ‘mankind, would increase so prodigiously that the earth would be left overstocked and become unable to support its inhabitants.’ Eventually, there would come a time ‘when our globe, by the most diligent culture, could not produce what was sufficient to nourish its numerous inhabitants.’ Wallace went on to suggest that it would be preferable if the human vices, by reducing population pressures, should prevent the emergence of a government not compatible with the ‘circumstances of Mankind upon the Earth.’” (Foster, 1998). 

In his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness (1793), William Godwin challenged Wallace’s thesis on the basis of his Enlightenment utopia beliefs. As Foster explains:

“In answer to Wallace, who had claimed that excessive population would result eventually from any perfect government, thus undermining its existence, Godwin contended that human population ‘will perhaps never be found in the ordinary course of affairs, greatly to increase, beyond the facility of subsistence.’ Population tended to be regulated in human society in accordance with conditions of wealth and wages. ‘It is impossible where the price of labour is greatly reduced, and an added population threatens still further reduction, that men should not be considerably under the influence of fear, respecting an early marriage, and a numerous family.’ For Godwin there were ‘various methods, by the practice of which population may be checked; by the exposing of children, as among the ancients, and, at this day, in China; by the art of procuring abortion, as it is said to subsist in the island of Ceylon…or lastly, by a systematical abstinence such as must be supposed, in some degree, to prevail in monasteries of either sex.’ But even without such extreme practices and institutions, “the encouragement or discouragement that arises from the general state of a community,” he insisted, “will probably be found to be all-powerful in its operation.’” (ibid).

In his first Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus intervened in this debate. 

“Malthus set out to overturn Godwin’s argument by changing the terrain of debate; rather than contending, like Wallace before him, that a ‘perfect government’ would eventually be undermined by the overstocking of the earth with human inhabitants, Malthus insisted that there was a constant tendency toward equilibrium between population and food supply. Nevertheless, population tended naturally when unchecked to increase at a geometrical rate (1, 2, 4, 8, 16), while food supply increased at best at an arithmetical rate (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Under these circumstances attention needed to be given to the checks that ensured that population stayed in equilibrium (apart from minor fluctuations) with the limited means of subsistence. These checks, Malthus argued, were all reducible to vice and misery, taking such forms as promiscuity before marriage, which limited fecundity (a common assumption in Malthus’ time), sickness, plagues, and—ultimately, if all other checks fell short, the dreaded scourge of famine. Since such misery and vice was necessary at all times to keep population in line with subsistence any future improvement of society, as envisioned by thinkers like Godwin and Condorcet, he contended, was impossible.”(ibid.) 

Thus, Malthus’ population theory is not what Saral has in mind.  It was Wallace not Malthus who argued the problem of population will be coming in some distant future to undermine “perfect government.” For Malthus, the problem was ever present since the dawn of history.  Here is how Foster describes it:

“Malthus himself did not use the term ‘overpopulation’ in advancing his argument—though it was used from the outset by his critics. Natural checks on population were so effective, in Malthus’ late-eighteenth-century perspective, that overpopulation, in the sense of the eventual overstocking of the globe with human inhabitants, was not the thing to be feared. The problem of an ‘overcharged population’ existed not at ‘a great distance’ (as Godwin had said), but rather was always operative, even at a time when most of the earth was uncultivated. In response to Condorcet he wrote ‘M. Condorcet thinks that it [the possibility of a period arising when the world's population has reached the limits of its subsistence] cannot .. be applicable but at an era extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of population and food which I have given be in any degree near the truth, it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence [in later editions this was changed to ‘easy means of subsistence’…] has arrived, and that this necessary oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind.’ In the 1803 edition of his work on population he wrote, ‘Other persons, besides Mr. Godwin, have imagined that I looked to certain periods in the future when population would exceed the means of subsistence in a much greater degree than at present, and that the evils arising from the principle of population were rather in contemplation than in existence; but this is a total misconception of the argument.’” (ibid. my emphases)

Marx had pointed out that the only novel idea in Malthus’ population theory was his proposition that food grows according to an arithmetic ratio.  But as Foster suggests Malthus had no basis for this proposition.  He merely claimed that anyone familiar with the state of agriculture would know it.  It is true that in pre-Darwinian understanding of the natural world it was assumed that animals and plant had little room for “improvement.”  It is also true that the Classical Political Economy’s so-called law of diminishing return to land was later used to support Malthus’ proposition on arithmetic ratio in growth of food.  But Malthus himself was not aware of such “law” and there is no mention of it in his books.  As I noted earlier, during Malthus’ own life Britain experienced it agricultural revolution when growth of food production exceeded population growth.  Still, as Foster summarize it: “For Malthus, the properties of the soil were not subject to historical change, but were simply ‘gifts of nature to man’ and, as Ricardo said, ‘indestructible.’”  He concludes: “All of this meant that the First Essay [where Malthus rejected the possibility of moral constraint for birth control] was a failure in that the argument was clearly insupportable.” (ibid.)

6. Malthus’ second Essay on the Principle of Population
In Malthus’ second Essay on the Principle of Population, he admitted the possibility of moral restraint to control human population but only for the upper classes. Malthus’ focus shifted from the question of “the future improvement of society” or Godwin and Condorcet to attacking the English Poor laws. This is reflected in the title: “An Essay of the Principle of Population; or a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; with an Inquiry into our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it Occasions.” Its basic thesis is to use his revised population theory to argue that the poor are not entitled to any social support. “We cannot, in the nature of things,” Malthus wrote, “assist the poor, in any way, without enabling them to rear up to manhood a greater number of their children.” Foster cites Marx’s observation in 1844 that the essence of Malthus’ work was that “charity…itself fostered social evils.” The very poverty that “formerly was attributed to a deficiency of charity was now ascribed to the superabundance of charity.” Thus, Malthus wrote:

“With regard to illegitimate children, after the proper notice has been given, they should on no account whatever be allowed to have any claim to parish allowance…. The infant is, comparatively speaking, of no value to the society, as others will immediately supply its place.” (quoted in Foster 1998).  In the same callous vein he wrote:

“A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he do not work on the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour…. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity…. The guests learn too late their error, in counteracting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full.” (ibid.)

Again Marx’s observation about Malthus is quite apt. As Foster writes: 

“Marx in Capital… [pointed] out that discussions of population in Britain had come to be dominated by Protestant parsons or ‘reverend scribblers,’ such as Robert Wallace, Joseph Townsend, Thomas Chalmers and Malthus himself. It was the recognized task of such ‘parson naturalists’ in the days before Darwin to provide natural law justifications for the established order. Malthus, as Marx observed, was lauded by an English oligarchy frightened by the revolutionary stirrings on the Continent, for his role as ‘the great destroyer of all hankerings after a progressive development of humanity.’” (my emphasis) 

“The revolutionary stirring on the Continent” was the French revolution of 1789-99.  

7. Marx’s and Engels’ criticism of Malthus
As Martha E. Gimenez has argued in “The Population Issue: Marx vs. Malthus” (Den Ny Verden, Journal of the Institute for Development Research, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 1973), Marx’s and Engels’ criticism of Malthus’ theory of population fall into two categories.  First, they argued that Malthus’ theory reified the existing problem of poverty in England.  Like the problem of fetishism discussed I discussed in Karl Marx or Club of Rome where social relations are cast as market relations, reification casts social issues as natural phenomenon. Thus, Malthus and his co-thinkers attributed poverty of the English working class to their numbers and its potential to multiply.  Thus, they refused to see that the plight of the English working class was due to capitalist industrialization. A social problem was cast as a natural phenomenon. As Marx writes in Section 4 of Chapter of 1 of the first volume of Capital, entitled “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof”: 

“Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him…

“The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms.” 

Second, for Marx and Engels development of human history is subject to historical laws influenced by its dominant modes of production. The size and rate of growth of human population is subject to this historical process of development. There is no general theory of human population good for all times.  Thus, Engels wrote to Albert Lange on March 29, 1865 about Malthus’ theory:

“The so-called ‘economic laws’ are not eternal laws of nature but historical laws that appear and disappear, and the code of modern political economy, insofar as the economists have drawn it up correctly and objectively, is for us merely a summary of the laws and conditions in which modern bourgeois society can exist, in a word: its conditions of production and exchange expressed and summed up abstractly. For us, therefore, none of these laws, insofar as it is an expression of purely bourgeois relations, is older than modern bourgeois society; those which have been more or less valid for all previous history, are thus only an expression of such relations as are common to all forms of society based upon class rule and class exploitation. Amongst the former we may count the so-called Ricardian law, which is valid neither for serfdom nor for the slavery of antiquity; amongst the latter, whatever part of the so-called Malthusian theory can be sustained.” 

In his discussion of “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation,” (Chapter 25, Capital, volume 1), Marx discusses formation of the “relative surplus population” or the “reserved army of the working class”, that is the poverty stricken section of the working class, through the dynamics of capitalist accumulation.  I just quote a segment of it but the entire section is worth contemplating. 

“The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits and only in so far as man has not interfered with them.

“But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost.” (my emphasis) 

Thus, Marx and Engels provided an alternative way to think about the problem of working class poverty than Malthus and naturally arrived at different policy prescription.  They defended the working class and the poor against the onslaught of capitalist ruling classes while Malthus did all he could to aid that onslaught.  

In Marx's and Engels' view, the “population problem” will be addressed in socialism: As Engels wrote to Lange in the letter cited above: 

“The parson Malthus filched this theory, like all his other ideas, directly from his predecessors; the only part of it which is truly his is the purely arbitrary application of the two progressions. The theory itself has long since been reduced by the economists in England to rational dimensions; the population exerts pressure on the means — not of subsistence, but of employment; mankind could multiply more rapidly than modern bourgeois society can stand. For us yet another reason to proclaim this bourgeois society to be a barrier to development which must fall.” 

8. Ecological socialism and the population problem: Malthus, Marx and beyond
It is now time to step back and ask why Saral or a large section of the environmental and ecological movements embrace Malthus but take a hostile attitude towards Marx.  Malthus did not offer a viable theory of human population dynamics. His population theory was hardly original and was used to justify the horrendous condition of the English working class and its poorest sections.  

Malthus’ novelty in proclaiming that food production grows arithmetically (while, as Wallace had said, population grows geometrically) was not based on any observation or fact. It was simply claimed.  Only later the political economist James Anderson who was a fierce opponent of Malthus proposed the “law of diminishing returns to land.” Even so, as Marx argued diminishing returns to land is subject to human intervention through technological change. History has proved that Marx not Malthus was correct; between 1820 and 2000 the world’s population grew sixfold and economic output multiplied by more than 50 (Eduardo Porter, “Old Forecast of Famine May Yet Come True,” The New York Times, April 2, 2014).  Today’s proponents of Malthus are hard pressed to argue that world hunger and occasional famine are due to lack of adequate supply of food.  It is easy to see that capitalist control over production of food for profit and lack of adequate employment to generate income for the poor are the sources of these problems. Moreover, the empirically-based theory of demographic transition proposed by the American demographer Warren Thompson in 1929 shows that in industrialized societies birth rates and death rates fall and more recent experience suggests that population of more developed capitalist countries may even contract.  Again, these findings are entirely against Malthus’ predications and more consistent with Marx’s view that population is not an independent factor in socioeconomic development.  Culture can trump nature.

Finally, it was Marx not Malthus who begin to pay attention to the ecology of the soil and its degradation in capitalist agriculture. It was Marx not Malthus who most eloquently argued that growth for the sake of growth is the basic nature of the capitalist system and the basis of it downfall (see, Marx or Club of Rome).  It was Marx not Malthus who had a vision of a socialist future based on free association of direct producers. Such association presupposes a democratically run planed economy and it is implicit in any such vision that it also must include population planing through empowering women.  

Why would any ecological socialist claim Malthus, not Marx, as his/her lineage in figuring out our way to a communal society that could live in harmony with the rest of nature?

However, over a century after Marx we need to look beyond.  Any definition of ecology includes the size and rate of growth of population of species and how their interactions affect ecological system’s health.  That is one reason I opened this discussion by noting the exponential growth of human population since 1800.  In 2012 the average world population density per square kilometer of land was 52 persons (The World Bank, accessed May 13, 2014) compared to 6.7 persons in 1800.  Accordingly, humans have been consuming ever larger part of the Earth’s life-sustaining resources.  For example, in a prominent 1986 study of the use of the energy captured in the food chain (Net Primary Productivity) p. Vitousek, A. Ehrlich, and P.  Matson estimated that humans directly consumed 40% of NPP (“Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis,” BioScience, vol. 277, pp. 494-499, 1986).  The consumption of the remaining 60% of NPP was also influenced by humans, for example, by farm animals. The same is true as expanding human population deprive wildlife of other life-sustaining factors, such as habitat and water.  For example, development of the Central Valley agribusiness in California that provides half of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the United States was made possible by expanding industrial farming into 95% of wetlands that migratory birds used resulting in the decline of their population.  Thus, the sixth great extinction (The Anthropocene) is driven in part by the sheer size and rate of growth of human population globally and in various regions of the planet. 

However, the debate about human population size and growth between the “Marxists” and environmentalist has been cast as if it is a choice between Marx or Malthus.  The environmentalists have focused attention on the “carrying capacity” and natural limits to growth while the”Marxists” have argued that hunger and occasional famine are due to the capitalist nature of the socioeconomic system. A socialist distribution system, they claim, will ensure adequate food for all.  

However, this is a false debate. First, today’s environmentalists are not advancing Malthusian arguments (even when they think they are as Saral does).  However, as they are correctly concerned with ecological wellbeing of the planet they tend to naturalize the population question like Malthus did by refusing to frame it in its capitalist economic context and its overriding anthropocentric culture.  The “Marxists” have been correct to point out the capitalist context of the population question.  However, they often refuse to acknowledge that there are too many people from an ecological point of view (for a recent demonstration of this denial see Too Many People? by Ian Angus and Simon Butler, New York: Haymarket Books, 2011). Similarly, the “Marxists” often deny the anthropocentric context of the present-day crisis.  Thus, in the sizable literature of “how many people can the Earth support” there is hardly any discussion of how many people are too many from the perspective of maintaining the integrity of the web of life on Earth (for an exception, see, Washington, Haydn. Human Dependence on Nature: How to Help Solve the Environmental Crisis.  Abingdon, Canada and New York: Routledge, 2013). 

This is the perspective that I believe is consistent with ecological socialism; the perspective that benefits from Marx’s criticism of Malthus’ naturalization of the population question yet reframes it in an ecocentric worldview where the size and rate of growth of our species would be controlled democratically through empowerment of women in a way to maintain biodiversity of the planet and ensure harmony with the rest of nature.  Let us call this perspective Deep Ecology Socialism that benefits from the wisdom of the Eight Points Platform proposed by Arnes Naess and George Sessions for consideration of the Deep Ecology movement in 1986.  I quote the first four of these principles: 

“1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: inherent worth, intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. 

“2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. 

“3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

"4. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.”

In his letter, Saral discounts the need for such change of paradigm from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism. He does so by equating it with a romantic (that is, impossible) return to the way of life of hunter-gatherers. 

While it is true that for millions of years hunter-gatherers held ecocentric world-views, it does not follow that to hold an ecocentric worldview one has to be a hunter-gatherer.  Today's Deep Ecology movement and the Darwinian evolutionary theory are living proof of that.  

Further, ecocentrism is not inconsistent with either Marx’s criticism of the capitalist society or the natural limits to growth perspective.   

Finally, ecocentrism is the only paradigm that allows for a true and lasting solution to the current crisis of society and nature.   In his letter, Saral takes up veganism (or vegetarianism) as an example of “ethical commandments” issued from such ecocentric perspective.  In the next segment, I will demonstrate why anyone concerned with the planetary crisis should adopt a vegan diet as a way to save the world. 

Endnotes:

1. It is helpful to set aside a persistent slight of Saral’s pen if not an outright error.  Marx bears no responsibility for whatever has come to pass as Marxism after his death.  Even in his own life time, Marx’s views were distorted by his supposed followers.  For example, in the discussion of the program of the French Parti Ouvrier in 1880, Marx accused Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue of “revolutionary phrase mongering” and declare “ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”) (see, Engels’ letter to Eduard Bernstein, November 2-3, 1882, in Marx and Engels Works Vol. 46. p.353).  Secondly, followers of Marx have branched out in so many directions that it is impossible to argue who is really representing the “real Marx.” So, Saral’s habit of trashing this or that “Marxist” group usually based on citing a personal conversations or citing one “Marxist” work and implying that they somehow represented Karl Marx’s ideas is methodologically and ethically wrong.  He also habitually uses this or that quotation from Marx taken from secondary literature to build up an argument against Marx.  This method is not acceptable in scholarly work.  

2.  In fact, there is a whole school of “Marxist economists” who decided Marx’s labor theory of value was no longer valid in the “new phase” of capitalist development.  This is the monopoly capital school made famous by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy (Monopoly Capital, with Paul Baran, 1966. Saral cites Sweezy as a Marxist authority to challenge the Marxian paradigm in favor of the natural limits to growth paradigm in the same preface to his The Crises of Capitalism, 2010) . This theory is a synthesis of Marx and Veblen. The foundation for their work was laid by Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910) that denied the operation of the law of value. He was followed by others who wrote about imperialism from Bukharin and Lenin to Sweezy and Baran. 

To be continued...

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1332. Limits of the Limits to Growth Perspective: A Discussion of Saral Sarkar's Explanation of the Great Recession

1338. Letter from Saral Sarkar: In Defense of the Limits to Growth Explanation of the Great Recession

1375. Did Natural Limits to Growth Cause the Great Recession?

1385. Karl Marx or Club of Rome?: Why Naturalizing Causes of the Great Recession Undermines Efforts to Transcend the Capitalist Civilization

1393. Are paradigms, theories, methods value neutral?