These late nineteenth-century works laid the foundations for a deluge of contem-
porary writings on human ecology.^6
Marx was not concerned with a consumer-reducing policy so much as a more
just system of resource distribution. He belittled Malthus, but as far as I have been
able to ascertain, was not aware of Marsh. He did read and commend Darwin,
because although Das KapitalandThe Communist Manifestodid not emerge in
English until the late nineteenth century, he was working on these at the time
Darwin’s publications were being put out. Marx also claimed that nature existed
only for mankind, which aligned fortuitously with the received anthropocentric
Judaic-Christian posture, which he perceived to be ‘religious humbug’.
Marx absorbed social commentaries. He seldom worked away from literary
sources. The ‘revolution’, his first practical suggestion and big mistake (based on
what he perceived to be the relative success of the French Revolution), predicated
the demise of capitalism, about which he was also mistaken. What he learned of
social inequity, arising from the distributive injustice of ‘class’ he strove to set
right, through the totalitarian reform of government; and in this he was also,
again, far from successful. Nevertheless his advocacy for equity in human organ-
ization much influenced governments and policy reasoning
throughout the world during the twentieth century.
Western leaders of the nineteenth century looked to their
stores of library knowledge and the technological wonders
erupting all about them, and came to two important conclusions.
First, there was a perception that technological advances would
improve the material wellbeing of both the ‘settler’ and the
‘colonized’ ‘indigenous’ peoples. Second, it happened often that
the indigenous peoples and the useful resources and labour
they owned could be exploited to serve European ends. This
was the crude transatlantic model for socio-economic advance
based on ‘purloined’ resources, ‘stolen’ lands and ‘coerced’
labour.
The transatlantic font of scholarship was the established
Old World university schools of philosophy, politics and
economics; not far removed from core subjects offered
today as liberal art studies. Armed with their store of knowl-
edge, technological superiority, and a Christian religiosity, it is
plausible to comprehend the assuredness with which European
settlers probed the global frontiers for resources and sought out
the labour of non-Christian peoples. There was a presumption
that the ‘poor’ at home in Europe, and the ‘primitive’ abroad,
could be raised from hunting and fish gathering sub-cultures,
via settled agriculture, to the meritocracy of a commercial-
exchange culture. This was an Era of Reason and Enlightenment
(c. 1650–1850) no less, where Eurocentric (later transatlantic)
notions of self-interest and natural liberty were rampant. Of
course these same human agencies could produce unintended
consequences; but when all went well, the European poor
Charter for Conservation with Development 77Darwin’s determinism
for the natural sciences
has, over time, out-
survived and out-flanked
Marx’s determinism for
the social sciences.
Darwin went alone into
the scientific
wildernesses and, against
his Christian induction,
carved out an
understanding of inter-
species dependency.
Little wonder that Marx
sifting through the
received wisdom stored
in the British Museum
Library found Darwin’s
VoyageandOrigin of
Speciesso pure, assertive
and undoubtedly correct
as to wish to dedicate
the first volume of Das
Kapitalto him. Darwin
declined; a pity this, for
although Darwin’s ailing
health would have
prevented collaboration,
the intellectual
association would have
tempered Marx’s
philosophical talent and
personal ambition with
an understanding of
scientific limits, on which
he, Marx, was adrift.