ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide a brief guide to four critical issues regarding human–nature relations from an eco-Marxist perspective. The first section outlines Marx’s view of how capitalism develops through human–nature relations. The second theorises processes of capital accumulation driving the enclosure of the commons, as well as struggles to defend and recreate common goods linked to collective practices. The third analyses capitalism’s contradictions to nature; and the fourth examines the concept of metabolic rift in the age of Capitalocene. With reference to key texts in an abundant and rapidly growing body of ecological Marxist literature, this guide seeks to point readers to landmark contributions and to ongoing debates that can provide the basis for theorising human–nature relations from a critical perspective, and for engaging in the collective praxis of building sustainable alternatives from below.
