PHIL 2380 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: New Social Movements, Underconsumption, Primitive Accumulation Of Capital
14 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Environmental problems are an integral part of a capitalist economy. Marx"s concepts of labor, accumulation, and crisis explain how the economy produces environmental problems. Labor is the alteration of the natural world by human action, therefore labor integrates nature and society. Nature + labor = commodity, which is a thing that can be sold or exchanged. The means of production are the things required to make things and commodities, such as factories and machinery. The conditions of production are the raw materials needed to produce things and commodities, such as wood, oil, and iron. In capitalism, workers sell their labor to the capitalists, who are the ones that own the means of production and the conditions of production. The products are then sold to consumers (who are usually also workers). The capitalist takes a share of the sale known as the surplus value.
