University of Amsterdam | Ewald Engelen presents Karl Marx | AISSR Great Thinkers

The exploitation of nature, animals and human labour has reached levels unknown in human history. While corporate profitability is at record height, the wage share has been declining for decades now. We are reaching the limits of our ecological metabolism due to man made changes in climate and nature. In this conjuncture the writings of Karl Marx have received renewed attention. Financial Geographer Ewald Engelen traces this renewed relevance of Karl Marx through an analysis of the three modes of criticism that Marx elaborated in Das Kapital, the first part of which was published exactly 150 years ago, applying them to the current state of affairs in the economy, economics and economic fethishization. He ends his talk with a brief discussion of what Marx failed to tell us and in fact requires a reworking of Marx's political economy into a truly political ecology.