Marx, Weber and Environmental Justice for All

Both Karl Marx and Max Weber believed that what people perceive as their own interests is often dependent upon socialization with regard to shared, communal values. For these thinkers, all conflict stemmed from humans being socialized toward a vested interest in food, land, money and other such material goods. For Marx, the citizens of the world should share these material elements equally. However, if resources exist only to be exploited by those best positioned to do, then the problem of world poverty is a difficult one to solve, even for these philosophical luminaries. Through the propagation of Environmental Justice, however, Marx and Weber would be pleased to see a potential means of effectively addressing and even curing the scourge of global poverty.

Environmental Injustice refers to the widespread set of instances in which traditionally marginalized peoples are compelled to suffer the majority of the harm generated by global pollution; an ill caused primarily by citizens of fully developed nations. To supplement this theory, theories of “environmental racism” and “environmental inequality” have emerged, as detailed here:

“Some of the causes of environmental inequality include institutional racism in housing, discriminatory zoning and planning practices, the lack of community access to environmental policy-making, the absence of people of color as elected officials, the historically rooted tendency for corporations and governments to follow the path of least resistance in facility siting, market dynamics, and the exclusion of low-income and people of color communities from the dominant environmental movement” (Pellow, Weinberg & Shainberg 427).

Essentially, the parties affected by Environmental Injustice are unable to mobilize as a result of lacking the socio-political support necessary to acquire assistance from parties protective of their interests. Indeed, the privileged citizens of the world work every day against these interests, which are held almost exclusively by the impoverished citizens of the world.

For Marx and Weber, the human condition can only be understood and cultivated once human beings comprehend that their self-preservation interests are greater than the value of nature in and of itself. As humans begin to accept that their own preservation depends upon their capacity to exploit natural resources, humans further seek to dominate nature by overcoming its challenges (Morrison 364). In this sense, global poverty seen through the prism of environmental injustice denies the impoverished citizens of the world the opportunity to define themselves by exercising their humanity through access to natural resources. For Marx, humans can only define themselves through this act of labor, which reinforces the social order to and through which the human condition has dedicated and defined itself (Ibid.). Without equal access to resources of the kind exploited by developed nations and locales, those afflicted by it will be unable to overcome global poverty.

Nevertheless, as various “stakeholders” attempt to gain access to the most valuable of natural resources, their costs and benefits are often distributed inequitably, thereby effectively denying impoverished peoples the opportunity to define themselves through development of a social order distinct from the physical or natural one. Within this context, “environmental racism” has been identified as the disproportionate exposure to toxic hazards suffered by various racial and ethnic minorities, on either a global or localized scale (Bullard 38). Locally speaking, African-Americans have found that their neighborhoods are often selected as sites for toxic waste disposal facilities or large-scale trash incinerators. However, without the means of controlling access to the natural resources by which people of developed locales define their respective social orders, African-Americans often become reliant on socio-political forms of order not of their own making for purposes of escaping the impact of environmental injustice. For example, the Civil Rights Act was appropriated by a group of African-Americans in Chicago for this purpose. In an effort to immunize a Chicago neighborhood from Environmental Injustice of the kind described above, African-Americans relied on a socio-political tool promulgated by an already defined privileged class (Ibid.). In so doing, they may have escaped the full force of Environmental Injustice. However, without the capacity for definition through cultivation of social infrastructure, these marginalized peoples remain impoverished.

On a global scale, the disproportionate manner in which developed nations dispose of the hazardous waste produced by its upper-class citizens has exposed under-developed nations to environmental pollution to which its citizens rarely contribute. However, due to the poor infrastructural state of their under-developed economies, third-world nations are often compelled by financial considerations to undertake the role of global trash disposal facility. This, of course, adds insult to the injuries already perceived by Marx and Weber in that it renders third-world and impoverished nations receptacles not only for trash, but also for that which is represented by this waste: the socio-political residue of developed nations. In this sense, not only are impoverished peoples deprived of the opportunity for social definition so essential to the human condition, but they are also forced to act as the guarantors of a socio-political infrastructure within which their more fortunate counterparts define themselves (Weber 131). In other words, citizens of developed nations not only further global poverty through this process, but also benefit from unloading the undesirable residue of their socio-cultural infrastructures onto those without the capacity for cultivation of such infrastructure.

This “toxic colonialism” does provide economic relief for developing nations. However, it deprives them of that which is necessary for purposes of capitalizing on this economic relief. Without access to the means by which a social order may be developed, Environmental Injustice will enslave impoverished people in perpetuity. Within this context, a cure to Environmental Injustice is the only genuine means of stemming the tide of global poverty in that it will allow for a generation of children and young adults to define themselves and, in so doing, create an objective reality in which their existence is processed without regard for external controls exercised by developing nations. Presently, the conditions generated by global poverty not only place millions of children in physically unhealthful environments in which their physical and developmental growth is impeded, but also mandate that these children be denied the educational resources necessary to overcome the restrictive order under which they live (Evans 80).

Across the globe, the conditions generating Environmental Injustice inevitably also generate or perpetuate global poverty through denial of developmental resources. In other words, where Environmental Justice reigns, one is more likely to find the weakest institutions of learning (Evans 81). Without educational resources as a result of Environmental Injustice, the next generation of global poverty is being forged through ignorance and incapacity. Essentially, world poverty relies upon these factors for survival or, as Marx and Weber might posit, world poverty conspires against the human condition by endeavoring to deny it that which is so fundamental to its satisfaction. For Marx and Weber, humans imbue their own lives and social infrastructures with meaning that nature alone cannot provide. Through our interactions with the physical order of things, we bring meaning to our lives and without the capacity to identify meaningful ways in which to engage in this exercise, the youngest generation of the globally impoverished will be unable to overcome their misfortunes through engagement with the resources denied them by a global regime of Environmental Injustice.

World poverty has become a social ill with which citizens of the world are readily familiar. It has emerged as a catch-phrase or buzz-word to which we attribute little meaning beyond a most general sense of widespread misfortune. Realistically, however, we contribute to the perpetuation of global poverty through denying citizens of third-world or developing nations access to the resources required for purposes of solidifying their respective existences with meaning; an exercise that Karl Marx and Max Weber explain can only occur once an individual is in a position to engage with and overcome the physical or natural order. Through a globalized regime of Environmental Injustice, we have denied the globally impoverished access to this position. Indeed, the manner in which the world’s more fortunate citizens define themselves through social ordering and exercise of dominion over nature relies upon appropriating those afflicted by world poverty as disposals for the by-product generated by our own exercise in socio-cultural definition. If we do not now expand access to natural resources to the youngest of the globally impoverished, we risk perpetuating world poverty. If we can take greater strides towards achieving Environmental Justice on a global scale, we will have gone a long way towards facilitating the socio-cultural definition necessary for impoverished peoples to realize the full potential of the human condition.

Works Cited

Bullard, Robert D. “Environmental Justice in the 20th Century.” The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005, pp. 19-42

Evans, Gary W. “The Environment of Childhood Poverty.” American Psychologist, vol. 59, no. 2, 2004, pp. 77-92.

Morrison, Ken. Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought. California: Sage Publications, Inc., 1995.

Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 129-156.

Pellow, et al. “The Environmental Justice Movement: Equitable Allocation of the Costs and Benefits of Environmental Management Outcomes.” Social Justice Research, vol. 14, no. 4, 2001, pp. 424-438.