The Emergence of Marxs

Critique of Modern Agriculture

Ecological Insights from His Excerpt Notebooks
Kohei Saito
I n t ro d u c t io n

While he was preparing for his critique of political economy, Marx

produced an enormous quantity of excerpt notebooks. Sometimes
accompanied by his own comments, they largely consist of direct
quotes from various books, journals, and newspaper articles that
attracted his attention. Although they were neglected among Marxist
scholars for quite a long time without publication in any languages,1
these notebooks, in addition to the manuscripts and letters, constitute
an invaluable original source for understanding Marxs thinking process. In fact, as the new Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) has started
to publish the excerpt notebooks in its fourth section, their importance
is slowly becoming more discernible.2 Marxs notebooks record his
ceaseless efforts to grasp the totality of capitalism, and, since Capital
remains unfinished, they provide useful hints for speculating how Marx
would have completed his project of critique of political economy.
As an attempt to comprehend the development of Marxs theory
through his notebooks, this paper analyzes his excerpts from books
by two agricultural chemists, Justus von Liebig and James F.W.
Johnston, in order to reveal a significant modification in regard to
Marxs attitude towards modern agricultural practice, which led his
to study the natural sciences even more intensively in his late years.3
Marx eagerly read these agricultural chemists a couple of times, once
in the beginning of the 1850s during his first thorough research on
political economy, and again in the middle of the 1860s when he was
preparing the manuscripts of Capital.4 Examining Marxs excerpts
cautiously, one realizes that he first attained a truly critical and ecological comprehension of modern agriculture, that goes beyond the
paradigm of the Ricardian theory of differential rent, in the middle of
Kohei Saito is a PhD candidate of philosophy at Humboldt University, Berlin. He is also
a member of the Japanese MEGA editorial group and currently working on Volume IV/18.
25

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the 1860s. Although Marx was at first quite optimistic about the positive effects of modern agriculture based on the application of natural
sciences and technology, he later came to emphasize the negative
consequences of agriculture under capitalism precisely because of
such an application, illustrating how it inevitably brings about disharmonies in the transhistorical metabolism (Stoffwechsel) between
human beings and nature.
M ar x s E xc e r p t s fro m Li ebi g s Bo o k o n Agricultural Che mistry

In one section titled Modern Industry and Agriculture in Capital,

Marx famously writes:
Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres,
and causes the urban population to achieve an ever greater preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical
motive-power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic
interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man and the soil, i.e., it prevents the
return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the
form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal
natural conditions for the lasting fertility of the soil.5

Pointing out harmful consequences of capitalist agriculture based

on a division of town and country that quickly exhausts the soil in
the interest of maximizing profits, Marx warns that the development
of productive forces and technology under capitalist relations of production does not automatically prepare the conditions for human
emancipation, but on the contrary causes a deep alienation of human
beings from their environment in the form of a metabolic riftecological disruption in their interrelations with nature.6
The recent growing interest in this ecological aspect of Marxs economic theorythanks to inspiring and convincing interpretations by
John Bellamy Fosters Marxs Ecology (2000) and Paul Burketts Marx and
Nature (1999)has directed attention to Marxs concept of metabolism (Stoffwechsel) and to Liebigs use of the term.7 In Capital, vol. 1,
Marx refers in a footnote to the passage cited above from the seventh
edition of Liebigs Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie
(1862) (abbreviated henceforth as Agricultural Chemistry), and especially to its Introduction. He praises Liebigs work for its immortal
merits in revealing the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture from the standpoint of natural science, adding that Liebigs
treatment of the history of agriculture, despite certain defects, contains flashes of insight.8 In the first German edition, he even states

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that Liebigs analysis of the conditions of agricultural productivity is

more important than [that of] all the economists put together.9
Apparently, therefore, Marxs critique of the metabolic rift in capitalism is especially indebted to this famous German chemist. However,
looking at the list of excerpted books in the fourth section of the MEGA2,
one notices that Marx had already read Liebigs Agricultural Chemistry once
in 1851. Nonetheless, a clear reception of Liebigs agricultural chemistry does not appear until the first manuscript for the third volume of
Capital. In other words, Marx did not develop a critique of ecological disruption under capitalism when he read Liebigs book for the first time.
What is more, examining his excerpt notebooks, normally called London
Notebooks (Londoner Hefte), from 18491853, one learns that Marx took notes
impressed by Liebigs optimistic ideas about the possibility of overcoming
the diminishing agricultural productivity through a scientific management of the soil based on a systematic use of synthetic fertilizers.
It is certainly true that Liebig himself became more critical of capitalist agriculture as time went on, and thus his critique of robbery
culture in the seventh edition of Agricultural Chemistry (1862), especially in its Introduction, must have more decisively contributed to
developing Marxs critique of the metabolic rift than its fourth edition
(1842), which he had studied with eagerness in 1851.10 This is not to
say that Marx failed to read anything critical about capitalist agriculture before 1860. To the contrary, he encountered critical books and
articles in that period, but, astonishingly enough, hardly paid attention
at the time. Furthermore, though he repeatedly referred to his own
notebooks in different economic manuscripts and in Capital itself, Marx
did not use the excerpts from Liebig in the London Notebooks at all. This
leads to the hypothesis that Marx later came to regard his notebooks
on agricultural chemistry in the London Notebooks as unsatisfactory for
his critical investigation of capitalism because they only contained positive prospects of its modern development.
Despite the appearance in the last fifteen years or so of a number of
pathbreaking studies of Marxs ecological thought, such studies were
unable to throw sufficient light on the actual evolutionary process
in which Marxs critique of modern agriculture emerged, during his
decades-long attempt to complete Capital.11 His notebooks on agriculture are thus indispensable, in that they enable us to see precisely how
he changed his attitude towards modern agriculture, in the process
of developing his materialist conception of the metabolic interaction
between humans and nature mediated by labor.12

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M ar x s Lo n d o n N ot ebooks a n d Cri t i q u e of the Law of

Di min is h in g Re t urn s

After his exile to London in 1849, Marx, despite severe financial

difficulties, went to the British Museum every day and filled twentyfour notebooks, which also contain a substantial amount of excerpts
on agricultural chemistry. As Michael Perelman points out, Marxs
main aim in studying natural sciences during this time was to reject a
widespread assumption of the law of diminishing returns.13 Ricardo
famously propagates this law in order to base his theory of differential
rent. He argued that since the availability of the best lands is severely
limited, more capital needs to be invested into less productive soils as
pressed by the growing population to supply more food. It follows that
the newly invested capital requires more labor in order to produce a
certain amount of agricultural products. Since the exchangeable value
of all commodities is regulated by production under the most unfavorable circumstances, Ricardo insists that the price of agricultural
production necessarily rises with the cultivation of less fruitful soils,
allowing for capitalists with better conditions of production to attain
the surplus of profit as ground rent.14
Though he accepted the basic mechanism of Ricardian differential
rent, Marx repeatedly criticized Ricardos unfounded assumption of
the law of diminishing returns early on. In 1845, he had already written
down in his excerpts from James Andersons A Calm Investigation of the
Circumstances that have led to the Present Scarcity of Grain in Britain (1801) about
the possibility of advancing the natural fertility of soils to a considerable degree: productiveness may be made to augment from year to
year, for a succession of time to which no limit can be assigned, till at
last it may be made to attain a degree of productiveness, which we cannot, perhaps, at this time conceive an idea.15 Later, in 1851, when Marx
read another book by Anderson, An Inquiry into the Causes that have hitherto
retarded the Advancement of Agriculture in Europa (1779), he quoted a similar
passage again: Infinite diversity of soils exists, as they may be so
much altered from their original state by the modes of culture they
have formerly been subjected to, by the manures.16 Marxs intension
is clear, because later in the Manuscripts of 186163 he actually cited these
sentences from his own notebooks in the context of discarding the
Ricardian presupposition of differential rent theory.17 In opposition to
Ricardos assumption, Marx continued to highly value Anderson who
propagated positive effects of using drainage and manures to improve
the productivity of soils to such a degree that food supply would suffice

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to cover the increase of population and the price of crops would remain
the same or even fall.
After reading Anderson again in 1851, Marx felt it necessary to read
more recent scientific works by agricultural chemists to gain a detailed
knowledge about the ways of advancing agricultural productivity,
especially the relationship between the use of synthetic fertilizers and
the fertility of the soil. In the London Notebooks, there are two principal
sources for this purpose: Liebig and Johnston.
It appears that Marx first happened to encounter Johnstons Notes on
North America through two articles in The Economist.18 These articles sum
up Johnstons book well, and it is likely that they motivated Marx to
study his more theoretical books on agricultural chemistry and geology. One of the articles starts by mentioning the fact that despite the
constant and growing communication between England and North
America, there was not sufficient information about the agricultural
capacity in the New World. Consequently, as the article continues,
a myth prevailed among English readers that a great improvement of
virgin soils had been achieved, and the soil would be inexhaustible in
North America. For the purpose of disproving this fallacy, the author of
The Economist values Johnstons Notes on North America (1851) quite highly,
as the authors knowledge of science, and its practical relations with
agriculture, enabled him to obtain very clear and accurate views.
According to the article, one of the most important of these conclusions is that the wheat-exporting power of North America has not
only been much exaggerated, but is actually, and not slowly, diminishing or even worn out.19 However, as the article continues, it is not in
the farmers interest to maintain the fertility of the land through good
managementbecause it is actually cheaper to sell it and settle upon
new land, going further west once the land becomes less agriculturally profitable. Thus, as the next article maintains, the diminishment
of crops is not at all surprising, once we learn that in many districts
the land has been cropped with wheat for fifty years without any other
manure than a ton of gypsum a year applied to the whole farm.20 Succinctly
summarizing Johnstons book to rebuff a widespread illusion about
American agriculture, these articles conclude that it is in reality still
trapped in a very primitive state, without a proper investment or
management, which quickly exhausts soils.21
Reading those articles in The Economist, Marx quotes only one sentence in regard to the exhaustion of lands in North America: the
Atlantic States of the Union and the western part of New York, once

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so prolific in wheat, has now become almost exhausted, and Ohio is

undergoing the same process.22 Nevertheless, this sentence does not
contain much information because it explains neither a reason for the
exhaustion nor its seriousness. In contrast, Marx is much more careful
to write down the details about how the introduction of drainage is
difficult in North America due to the low cost of abundant lands, and
why a larger scale of farming is not profitable and not popular.23
Here, Marx seems more attentive to descriptions that there are not
serious attempts to improve the soil through mechanical and chemical means due to the lack of farmers knowledge and capital. Those
excerpted passages give an impression that Marx is less interested
in the exhausted state of soils in North America than in Johnstons
reports about the primitive or pre-capitalist state of agriculture,
which at the same time implies the future possibility of advancing the
productivity of its lands under the development of American society
under capitalism.
Other excerpts from the same period also strengthen the same
impression. In the London Notebook VIII, Marx studies John Mortons
On the Nature and Property of Soils (1838), which is considered to be one
of the earliest studies on the relationship between geological compositions and the productivity of lands. Due to a lack of adequate
knowledge of chemistry, Morton does not correctly grasp the role
of inorganic materials, which he thinks augment the productivity
merely by changing the texture of the soil and thus by improving
the effectiveness of plants to absorb moisture, air, heat, and organic
materials.24 As he misses the function of minerals and emphasizes
the essential function of decomposed plants, he also optimistically
insists: On a careful examination one finds that the production of vegetables will never exhaust a land. Morton argues that the quality of the
soil on each, is infinitely varied, and increases in value according to
the degree of culture it receives, or the soil is susceptible of a continued improvement by every fresh application of capital judiciously
employed. Despite the seemingly optimistic tone of Morton, however, one should note that according to him the powers of nature to
create vegetable productions appear never to diminish only because
the decay of one crop becomes the nourishment of the next.25 Even
if Mortons insight is restrained by the theoretical and practical
knowledge of his time, this limitation also allowed him openly to
presuppose the cycle of nourishment between old and new plants as
a feasible condition for sustainable agriculture.

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In this context, Marxs excerpts in the London Notebook X from Henry

C. Careys book, The Past, the Present, and the Future (1848) are worth examining. This book, like Johnstons Notes on North America, very explicitly
challenged Mortons thesis by pointing out the fact that this way of
recycling of nourishments was in danger in North America because of
its exhausting management of the soil: the tendency of the whole system of the United States, is that of taking from the great machine [i.e.,
soils] all that it will yield, and giving nothing back.26 Here are some
concrete examples about the exhaustion offered by Carey himself:
The farmer of New York raises wheat, which exhausts the land. That
wheat he sells, and both grain and straw are lost. The average yield per
acre, originally twenty bushels, falls one-third.
The Kentuckian exhausts his land with hemp, and then wastes his
manure on the road, in carrying it to market.
Virginia is exhausted by tobacco, and men desert their homes to seek
in the west new lands, to be again exhausted; and thus are labour and
manure wasted, while the great machine deteriorates, because men cannot come to take from it the vast supplies of food with which it is charged.27

According to Carey, the scattered settlement over the vast continent

makes it tremendously complicated to give soils back what plants have
taken from them. When consumers and producers lived close to each
other, it would be possible to pay them [soils] back by giving them
the whole refuse.28 Yet, as Carey reprimands, in the current scattered
state of the population, nothing can be done but sending agricultural
products to distant markets and thus losing altogether the manure. He
eagerly claims the necessity of building an autarkic town community
based on a concentration of producers and consumers without a special opposition between town and country.
In spite of these explicit remarks by Carey, similar to those in The
Economist, about the exhausted soils in the United States, Marx does not
seem to have paid any particular attention to them. In fact, he did not
quote any of these sentences despite the fact that he did copy various
passages before and after them. His excerpts primarily focus on Careys
descriptions about how the primitive state of agriculture in North
America actually improved as the population increased. For instance,
Marx wrote down a passage in which Carey argues against the classical political economist, J. R. McCulloch, who, as a Ricardian, insisted
upon the insurmountable natural limits of agricultural development
due to the scarcity of best lands: Man is always going from a poor soil
to a better, and then returning on his footsteps to the original poor one,

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and turning up the marle or the lime; and so on, in continued succession and at each step in this course, he is making a better machine.29
With a marginal line for emphasis, Marx also excerpted from Carey
that, contrary to the law of diminishing returns, the increase in the
population and the agricultural development mutually reinforce each
other: Everywhere, with increased power of union, we see them exercising increased power over land. Everywhere, as the new soils are
brought into activity, and they are enabled to obtain larger returns, we
find more rapid increase of population, producing increased tendency
to combination of exertion.30
Reading various books on agriculture, Marx found a range of indications that the improvement of agricultural productivity requires a
conscious management of lands, the potential of which the advance
of natural sciences and technology brought about for the first time
in history. However, he did not follow critiques by Johnston and
Carey in terms of the real situation of agricultural practice that rapidly
exhausts lands without proper management of soils based on recycling
of organic and inorganic materials. Instead, since Marx was concerned
with a critique of the law of diminishing returns, he sought to rebuff
Ricardos unsubstantiated supposition by gathering scientific evidence
that shows the possibility of advancing the fertility of soils in accordance with the progress of modern society.31 Consequently, Marx often
appears hastily and optimistically to attribute the problem of exhaustion to the primitive state of agriculture in pre-capitalist countries,
and stress the strategic importance of ameliorating their agricultural
productivity in capitalism for the sake of a coming socialist revolution:
But the more I get into the stuff, the more I become convinced that
agricultural reform, and hence the question of property based on it, is
the alpha and omega of the coming revolution. Without that, Parson
Malthus will prove right.32
Liebigs Optimism in the Fourth Edition of Agricultural Chemistry

This tendency continues in the following London Notebooks XIIXIV,

that is, in Marxs careful excerpts from Liebig and Johnston. Liebig
is one of the most famous German chemists in the nineteenth century, and he is often regarded as the father of organic chemistry. In
his Agricultural Chemistry (1842), Liebig attempts to apply his knowledge
of chemistry to the praxis of agriculture. He propagates the merit of
chemistry for the sake of the progress of agriculture because it can
determine what the components of soils and plants are, how they

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function, and how they should be consumed and supplemented in an

efficient manner. Inadequate understanding of chemistry and plant
physiology, in contrast, leads to the fallacy of the so-called humus
theory advocated by Johann Heinrich von Thnen, which wrongly
assumes the direct contribution of the well-decomposed residue of
plants as the source of the plant food, absorbed, as organic substances,
through roots of plants. Liebig persuasively demonstrates, based on
his chemical experiments, that humus only indirectly contributes to
plant growth by providing carbons and nitrogen in the process of its
decay. Liebig concludes from his observations that the importance of
humus is therefore limited or even nonexistent (in an earlier edition of
the Agricultural Chemistry he had gone so far as to say humus does not
yield the smallest nourishment to plants) because plants can later sufficiently absorb carbon from carbonic gas in the atmosphere through
photosynthesis and receive nitrogen in the form of ammonium from the
soil.33 (It was not until much later that it was discovered that certain
plantslegumes, in association with bacteria living in their roots
were able to draw nitrogen from the atmosphere.)
Liebigs so-called mineral theory, as opposed to the emphasis on
organic materials by the humus theory, emphasizes the essential role of
inorganic materials in soil for ample plant growth. However, according
to Liebig, they can be exhausted due to cultivation, because neither
atmosphere nor rainwater can sufficiently provide them. The loss of
inorganic materials must be restrained to a minimal degree so that
the soil can sustain its original fruitfulness over the long term. Liebig
suggests a series of methods for this purpose, such as fallow, crop rotation, and drainage. It is, nevertheless, often necessary to directly add
an amount of necessary minerals to the soil if it is to avoid the state of
exhaustion or to increase its productivity: The fertility of a soil cannot remain unimpaired, unless we replace in it all those substances of
which it has been thus deprived. Now this is effected by manure.34
This occurs for instance by adding more animal and human excrements
and bones to the soil.
Yet, contrary to a dominant vitalistic belief at that time, Liebig
analyzes the purely chemical reaction of manures in the soil and
comes to a conclusion that for animal excrements, other substances
containing their essential constituents may be substituted. 35 Marx
quotes a key passage where Liebig hopes to replace animal excrements and bones through chemical fertilizers produced in factories:
whether this restoration be effected by means of excrements, ashes,

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or bones, is in a great measure a matter of indifference. A time will

come when fields will be manured with a solution of glass (silicate of
potash), with the ashes of burnt straw, and with salts of phosphoric
acid, prepared in chemical manufactories.36
As the passage quoted by Marx plainly shows, Liebig is optimistic
about the future development of natural science that permits producing a large amount of chemical manure in factories. This possibility
suggested by a famous chemist must have appeared to Marx as a strong
counterargument against the law of diminishing returns.
Certainly, Liebig recognizes that insofar as inorganic materials are
finite, agriculture can exhaust soils. Some sentences in Agricultural
Chemistry actually acknowledge the exhausted state of soils in Europe
and the United States, but their tone still remains quite weak because
Liebig mentions the fact only strategically to emphasize the essential
role of minerals against humus theory.37 After all, Liebig assumes that
the exhausted state of soils can be cured through manures. It is clear
that Marx studied Liebig very carefully not because he was interested
in the state of exhausted lands due to agriculture, but rather because
he was striving to understand the function of organic and inorganic
materials for plant growth and a variety of methods for increasing
crops, including chemical fertilizers.
To understand more clearly Marxs intention in studying Liebig,
his excerpts from Johnstons books in the following London Notebooks
are useful. In his letter to Engels on October 13, 1851, Marx affirmatively referred to Johnstons Notes on North America (1851), characterizing
him (though a Scot) as the English Liebig.38 Before writing the letter, Marx had already read Johnstons Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry
and Geology (1847) and Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology (1849)
and carefully studied these books in the London Notebooks XIII and XIV.39
Since Marx identifies Johnston with Liebig, excerpted texts from
the formers books simultaneously help us discern more clearly how
Marx was reading Liebig and which aspects of agricultural chemistry
he was trying to learn from these agricultural chemists.
Johnston, a Scottish chemist and geologist, is like Liebig one of the
leading figures in the field of agricultural chemistry in the nineteenth
century and contributed to the development of agricultural praxis
through the application of chemical and geological knowledge acquired
during his various travels through Europe and North America. Similar
to Liebig, Johnston also recognizes that organic materials alone do not
suffice for ample plant growth, but that inorganic materials must be

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constantly returned to the soil after plants absorb them.40 Otherwise,

sooner or later, it will be fully exhausted. It is certainly preferable to
cultivate lands under better natural conditions, so Johnston proposes
to conduct a geological survey and to prepare a geological map that
highlights fruitful soils.41 He also firmly believes, contrary to Ricardo,
that natural character and composition is subjected to mechanical
and chemical improvements: the farmer can change the character of the
land itself. He can alter both its physical qualities and its chemical composition and thus can fit it for growing other races of plants than those
which it naturally bearsor, if he choose [sic], the same races in greater
abundance and with increased luxuriance.42
Although Johnston is surely aware of the danger of natural lands
being exhausted without a proper management, the following passage from his Catechism reflects the same optimism towards the use of
chemical manure as observed in Liebigs Agricultural Chemistry: if the
farmer puts in the soil the proper substances, in the proper quantities, and at the proper times, he may keep up the fertility of the land,
perhaps for ever. To make his land better, he must put in more than he
takes out.43 In order to attain constant profits, Johnston advocates
advancing productivity by changing the chemical composition of the
land through mechanical and chemical means. For this purpose, he also
suggests importing from foreign countries guano and bones rich in
mineral substances because they are suitable for transport over great
distances,44 even though this is, as we see later, exactly the view that
Marx calls into question in the 1860s under Liebigs influence.
Now one can better comprehend why Marx calls Johnston the
English Liebig. Both Liebig and Johnston appreciate the essential role
of minerals for the plant growth, but, more importantly, they share
the same optimism about ameliorating agricultural productivity to a
considerable degree through the application of natural science and
technology. In the context of criticizing the Ricardian law of diminishing returns, claims made by Liebig and Johnston provide Marx with a
scientific foundation about the possibilities of modern agricultural production based on the newest discoveries of natural sciences. Contrary
to Ricardo, who assumes a strict natural limit to the improvement of
the productivity of each soil,45 Marx comes to believe in the future great
advancement of agriculture.
Of course, this would not mean that the fertility of the soil could
be multiplied infinitely, as if there were no natural limits at all for
agricultural production. However, insofar as Marx, influenced by

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Liebig and Johnston, presumes that the exhausted state of the soil can
be cured by using synthetic fertilizers, guano, and bones, it is hard to
find a concrete analysis on the relationship between the exhausting
culture and the natural limits of the soil, which makes the general
tone of Marxs notebooks from 1851 appear sometimes too optimistic.
Criticizing Ricardos ahistorical understanding of the natural character
of the soil, Marx too strongly emphasizes the sociality of agricultural
productivity, as if the natural limit imposed upon agriculture does not
really exist. By doing so, his theoretical framework tacitly assumes the
static binary between naturalness and sociality without adequately
considering the dynamic entanglement between the internal logic of
the natural material world and its social and historical modifications
under capitalism.
However, Marx became much more conscious of this entanglement in the 1860s, and this is how Liebigs concept of metabolism
decisively contributed to the deepening of Marxs critique of the
metabolic rift under modern agriculture. When Marx starts theorizing the natural limit of agricultural productivity, he does not argue
that it would manifest as a natural consequence of the law of diminishing returns. On the contrary, Marx claims that the contradiction
of capitalist agriculture emerges precisely because the free power
of nature is subjected to historical modifications under the logic of
valorization, resulting in the disruption of the natural metabolic cycle
under robbery culture in capitalism.
L i ebigs A gr i cu lt ura l Chem i s t r y i n 1 8 6 2 and his Critique of
Ro b b e r y E c o n omy

Finishing up writing his manuscript for the chapters on ground rent

in Capital, Marx, in a letter to Engels, emphasized the importance of
the scientific contributions by Liebig and Schnbein, and then continued: I concluded my theoretical investigation of ground rent two
years ago. And a great deal had been achieved, entirely in the period
since then, fully confirming my theory.46 In the process of acquainting
himself with the newest achievements of agricultural chemistry, the
development of Marxs critique of political economy allowed him to
integrate Liebigs agricultural chemistry as a basis for his critical analysis of the capitalist form of agricultural praxis.47 Marxs main concern
is no longer simply the law of diminishing returns, which he rejected
through his studies of agricultural chemistry in 1851. Yet, as seen above,
Marx did not pay sufficient attention to the concrete reality in terms

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of how the very historicity and sociality of the fertility of the soil could
cause diverse contradictions in agricultural production under certain
social conditions.
Preparing the manuscript on ground rent, Marx takes up this problem seriously by dealing more cautiously with the capitalist form of
agriculturethat is, how the logic of capital modifies or even distorts
the relationship between human beings and nature mediated by labor.
The labor process in general, i.e., as a transhistorical reality common to
all forms of production, is defined by Marx as the metabolic interaction between humans and naturethe primary mediation between the
human beings and the natural conditions of their existence. Humanity
needs to work upon and transform nature to be able to reproduce its
distinctly human-social species being. However, the labor process,
viewed from the standpoint of any given concrete reality, and not simply transhistorically, always takes on a certain determinate historical
form (Formbestimmung), associated with a particular set of relations of
production. This reflects the varying ways in which humans carry out
the metabolic interaction with their environment.
Marxs Capital reveals that the capitalist form of labor, i.e., wage
labor, radically transforms and reorganizes material dimensions of
labor according to the logic of valorization. There emerges the domination of abstract labor as the sole source of value, which violently
abstracts labor from other essential concrete aspects and turns humans
into a mere personification of the reified thing through formal and real
subsumption under capital. The process of accommodating human
activity for the logic of capital causes various disharmonies in the lives
of workers, such as overwork, mental illness, and child labor, as Marx
described in the chapters on The Working Day and Machinery and
the Modern Industry. This domination by capital goes beyond the
reorganization of labor in the factory as the sphere of commodification enlarges to subsume agriculture. Consequently, as the section on
Modern Industry and Agriculture describes, it produces various discordances in the material world by disturbing the natural metabolic
interaction between humans and nature. It is then no coincidence that
Marxs notebooks on agricultural chemistry also reflect a shift of his
interest because he now studies it again in order to deal with such a
destructive transformation of the material world under capitalism.
The seventh edition of Agricultural Chemistry must have been particularly insightful for Marxs purpose because Liebig also altered
his arguments in such a way that Marx thinks entirely affirm my

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theory. Liebig reinforced his critique of robbery culture (Raubbau)

in modern society, which takes mineral substances from the soil
without return for the sake of maximal profits. In the newly added
Introduction, Liebig warns: Each land will inevitably become
poorer not only by continuously exporting its crops, but also by
uselessly wasting the products of metabolism (Stoffwechsel) that accumulate in large cities.48 The population growth in towns, the result
of industrialization, increases demands for agricultural products
from the country; but the mineral substances contained in them do
not return to the original soil. Farmers also strive to sell as much as
they can in order to attain more profits, so they even end up selling
bones and straw, which should be used for maintaining the fertility
of their own lands. Marx thus finds a new scientific expression for
the modern problem of the division between town and land, which he
and Engels suggested in The German Ideology.
Liebig continues further: it is clear to everyone that labor as such
gradually but constantly makes the soil poorer and exhausts it in the
end. One knows that one returns nothing to the field in this way, but
always takes up [everything] into crops.49 Marxs notebook carefully
follows these explanations offered by Liebig that convey how the reified praxis of agriculture inevitably destroys the natural metabolic
cycle. By merely pursuing the maximal crops without considering the
reproducibility of the current fertility in the future, robbery culture
exploits the free power of the natural world as a tool to squander for
the sake of capital accumulation.
As Liebigs seventh edition repeatedly warns that there is always
the danger of exhaustion, it is interesting in this context to see differences in tone between the two editions. In one passage cited in the
London Notebooks, Liebig writes: Soil formed from basalt, grauwacke,
and porphyry, are the best for meadowland, on account of the large
quantity of potash they contain. The potash abstracted by the plants
is restored during the annual irrigation. The amount of potash contained in the soil itself is inexhaustible in comparison with the quantity
necessary for plants.50
In the seventh edition Liebig modifies the sentence: Soil formed
from basalt, phonolite, clay slate, grauwacke, porphyry are the best for
meadow-land under the same condition due to their decomposition,
on account of the large quantity of alkalies. The amount of alkalies
contained in the soil itself is very great in comparison with the quantity
necessary for plants, although not inexhaustible.51

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The seventh edition suggests that even the most favorable lands are
by no means free from exhaustion. Furthermore, in the fourth edition,
Liebig argued, after the passage cited above, that the exhaustion of the
meadowland is simply due to the lack of potash, and it is possible to
regain the former productivity by adding ash: But if the meadow
be strewed from time to time with wood-ashes then grass thrives as
luxuriantly as before.52 This gives the misleading impression that ash
could easily cure the exhaustion of the soil, and so Liebig deletes this
sentence in the seventh edition. He seems to admit the limits of the
effectiveness of manures in preventing the loss of minerals.
Furthermore, Marxs excerpts from Johnstons Notes on North America
in 1865 reflect the same tone as his excerpts from Liebig. As seen above,
Marx did not pay any particular attention to the exhaustion of lands in
North America when he read the two articles in The Economist and Careys
book in 1851. Yet, after Marx cited a sentence from Liebigs Agricultural
Chemistry that this is the natural course of the robbery culture, which has
been pursued nowhere on a larger scale than in North America, he actually read Johnstons Notes in order to study the real agricultural state in
North America, despite his general avoidance of travel reports.53
This time, Marx clearly concentrates on those passages by Johnston
that describe the diminution of the productivity of soils due to robbery
culture, which Marx refers to as the system of exhaustion in North
America: The common system, in fact, of North America of selling
everything for which a market can be got [hay, corn, potatoes etc]; and
taking no trouble to put anything into the soil in return.54 Johnston
continues: There was however no motivation for those American
farmers who merely seek for profits to conduct a more reasonable agriculture with a good management of their soils because careless and
improvident farming habits thus introduced it was cheaper and
more profitable to clear and crop new land than to renovate the old.55
Consequently, farmers also have no interest in preserving or improving
the fertility of their lands for their children: The owner has already
fixed a price in his mind for which he hopes to sell, believing that,
with the same money, he could do better for himself and his family by
going still farther west.56
As long as agriculture, under the monopoly of private property, is
carried out on the basis of profit calculation, the robbery culture prevails over society simply because the squandering exploitation of lands
is more profitable in the short term. Facing this deep contradiction
of the capitalist form of agriculture, Johnston, the very conservative

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agricultural chemist (!) as Marx calls him, repeatedly tries to justify

it as a necessary, but only temporary, evil: the emigration of this class
of wilderness-clearing and new land-exhausting farmers, is a kind of
necessity in the rural progress of a new country. It is a thing to rejoice
in rather to regret.57 Curiously enough, focusing on descriptions about
the state of exhausting agriculture under this system, Marx stops his
excerpts right before the passage cited just above and also ignores other
passages where the conservative agricultural chemist stresses, in vain,
the future possibility of introducing a more rational agricultural system
through education and the development of technology under capitalism.
Against the robbery economy, Marx in Capital demands both the preservation and sustainable improvements of lands for future generations:
From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private
property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd
as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society,
a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not
the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries,
and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations
as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].58

Obviously, Marx still recognizes the importance of rational culture,

an idea which he attained from Liebig and Johnston in the 1850s, and
states that the unique merit of employing soils is the possibility of constantly investing capital without losing previous investments.59 However,
Marx also makes it unambiguously clear this time that it is not the
primitive agricultural state in North America, but precisely the capitalist
relations of production that prevent such a rational form of agriculture
by forcing American farmers to abandon lands, going further west once
they no longer produce enough profits. Capital actually constitutes a system of robbery economy with an art of exploiting the productive force
of nature for free, as Liebig writes that the crude robbery develops into
the art of robbery.60 The exhaustion of lands in North America has its
origin precisely in the development of capitalismand not simply due
to the pre-capitalist backwardness of its agriculture, as the articles of
The Economist indicated in accordance with Johnston. Marx plainly states
in Capital: all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given
time, is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that
fertility. The more a country proceeds from large-scale industry as the
background of its development, as in the case of the United States, the
more rapid is this process of destruction.61

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An important aspect of soil fertility was not yet recognized by scientists, and, therefore, also not recognized by Marx. Plants do not
generally directly use nutrients that are part of organic matter. They
are first converted into inorganic elements that plants can directly use
during the process of decomposition by soil organisms. However, it is
now understood that soil organic matter is a critical part of building
and maintaining healthy and productive soils. It positively influences
almost all soil propertieschemical, biological, and physical. While
it is true that organic matter (or humus) is not taken up directly by
plants, its depletion from soils is one of the main causes for decreased
productivity. Adding only inorganic chemical nutrients to replenish
those removed by crops can leave soils in poor biological and physical condition leading to numerous problems including accelerated
erosion, droughty soils (that do not store much water), low nutrient
holding capacity, more disease and insect problems, and so on. In
modern industrial agriculture these are corrected to an extent with
greater capital input in the form of pesticides, fertilizers, more powerful equipment, and more frequent irrigation.62
G u a n o I m p e r i a l i s m a nd Gl o ba l Ec o l o gical Crise s

As his critical view toward modern agriculture develops, the seventh edition of Liebigs Agricultural Chemistry thoroughly criticizes
existing attempts of agricultural praxis to maintain or increase the
fertility of the soil, including the dependence upon imports of guano
and bones. In the fourth edition this solution did not bother Liebig so
much; like Johnston, he simply stated that a small quantity of guano
could greatly improve poor land that consists only of sand and clay.63
However, as the resource of guano became scarce, Liebig added some
passages in the seventh edition to warn about importing guano from
foreign countries because such a form of agriculture would quickly
exhaust lands and annihilate guano in South America.64 Attempts
to recover the fertility of land in England and North America with
guano could at most postpone the unavoidable exhaustion to a very
near future. What is more, importing guano from South America is
based on a system of oppression and destruction. Not only does it
create economic and political inequalities through the brutal subjugation and exploitation of colonial inhabitants, but it also causes the
exhaustion of natural resources and the devastation of ecosystems,
which Brett Clark and Foster properly characterize as the global
metabolic rift due to ecological imperialism.65

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Under the heated competition of so-called guano imperialism,

England and North America strove to import an enormous amount of
guano in order to prevent the loss of the fertility of their own soils,
but this even worsened the situation from an ecological point of view,
because the disruption of the metabolic cycle now emerged on a global
level. After importing a large amount of guano from South America,
North America exported wheat to England. Minerals contained in
guano were taken up by crops in North America, but they returned
neither to American nor English lands. They simply ended up pouring
into the River Thames as sewage, severely degrading the living conditions in London.66 Importing guano and wheat without returning
them to where they came from, English capitalism could barely sustain
the existing robbery and wasteful system of production. As capitalism developed and its network of commodity exchange became more
global due to the emergence of more effective means of transportation,
the scarcity of natural resources, and the exhaustion of land and guano,
prevailed more devastatingly than ever.
Marx recognized the capitalist tendency to anti-ecological robbery
from peripheral countries through his analysis of Englands importation in effect of the soil of Ireland, despoiling it of its nutrients.67 His
usage of Liebig in the 1860s thus proves to be a more sophisticated
one, in criticizing Ricardos rent theory, than in the case of the London
Notebooks. Marx does not simply problematize Ricardos unscientific
and ahistorical assumption of the law of diminishing returns but also
his solution to the obstacle imposed upon capital accumulation due to
the scarcity of natural resources.
According to the law of diminishing returns, Ricardo argues that
the advance of the population requires the cultivation of less fertile
lands. It requires more labor to produce the same quantity of crops
and causes the general increase of wheat price, which also never
fails to raise ground rent and the labor wage. Corresponding to the
increase, the profit rate falls. In order to eliminate this hindrance to
capital accumulation, Ricardo famously supports the idea of abolishing the Corn Law and insists upon importing cheaper crops from
foreign countries and concentrating on industrial development within
England instead of cultivating less fertile lands under the pressure
from the growing population to provide more food. Here Ricardo only
considers a constant retreat to less productive lands without seriously taking their exhaustion into account, for he actually believes
in the original and indestructible powers of the soil.68 Even if the best

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land in England is limited, there would be enough fertile lands in the

world for English capital accumulation.
Referring to Liebig, Marx now warns, in opposition Ricardo, that
the international crop trade means nothing but the global reckless
robbery of the vitality of the soil: in capitalism large landed property
reduces the agricultural population to a constantly falling minimum,
and confronts it with an ever growing industrial population crammed
together in large towns; in this way it produces conditions that provoke
an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism,
a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The result of
this is a squandering of the vitality of the soil, which is carried by trade far beyond
the bounds of a single country (Liebig).69 Contrary to Ricardos assumption,
the import of crops from North America or Eastern Europe would
by no means solve the fundamental crisis of capitalist agricultural
production, because the import of crops would only enlarge the
metabolic rift under capitalism on a global level. Insofar as the infinite
desire for capital accumulation hinders humans from constructing any
rational and sustainable interrelation to their environment, capitalism
cannot overcome the metabolic rift arising from natural limits inherent
to the logic of the natural world. On the contrary, it ultimately poses an
insurmountable obstacle to the regime of capital accumulation.
In contrast to Ricardo, Marx thus demands the abolition of the capitalist relations of production so that the problem of natural limits can be
managed without aggravating ecological disruptions: the moral of the
tale is that the capitalist system runs counter to a rational agriculture,
or that a rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist system,
and it requires the control of the associated producers.70 A more rational management of the metabolic interaction by associated producers
includes consciously giving back to soils what plants have taken away.
Surely enough, Marx recognizes that the modern development of
natural sciences and technology prepares the necessary material conditions of rational culture by inventing better chemical fertilizers or
a more effective system of drainage. Yet the new knowledge that the
development of natural sciences brings about is not neutral for the
environment, as its capitalist application does not primarily take the
ecological sustainability into account but aims to maximize profits,
which rather leads to a wasteful or irrational art of cultivation of the
soil. Thus, it compromises the necessary environmental bases for
human reproduction itselfi.e., the existence of the land as permanent communal property, as the inalienable condition for the existence

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and reproduction of the chain of human generations.71 This deep,

crisis-laden estrangement from nature cannot help but bring into question the legitimacy of the capitalist system itself in the long run. Marx
thus foresees that the limitation of subsumption of the material world
under capital creates a realm of resistance against the logic of valorization. The disharmony forces an enormous [new] consciousness to
emerge with which human beings more subjectively and consciously
deal with their metabolic interaction with nature.72
Con c lu s io n

To sum up, if, despite the intensive usage of synthetic fertilizers,

industrial agriculture under capitalism only exhausts land over the
long run, a socialist project needs to carry out a radical change. This
means learning to manage soils more holistically, using better rotations and other management practices than possible given the logic of
capitalist markets. These practices should aim to maintain and build
soil organic matter and enhance the health of the soil and its biological, chemical, and physical characteristics. Contrary to a common
critique of Marxs Prometheanism, he does not overestimate the
modern development of technology at all.73 Instead, analyzing how
the logic of capital transforms the transhistorical metabolism between
humans and nature, Marx convincingly emphasizes the necessity of
consciously interacting with nature to enable a sustainable development of humanity and nature, and he attests to the irrationality
and contradictions of the development of productive forces under the
capitalist mode of production.
In order to theorize a more rational form of culture, modern natural
sciences, including the agricultural chemistry and geology of Liebig and
Johnston, play a significant role for Marx because they uncover necessary conditions of reproducing the original state of soil. After publishing
the first volume of Capital, Marx engaged in a more intensive study of
the natural sciences. Throughout the process, Marx attempted a critical
comprehension of the ongoing ecological degradation under capitalism
from a broader scientific perspective. Nonetheless, despite his ceaseless
effort, Marx was never able fully to integrate these broader historical
analyses of agriculture and civilization into his critique of political economy. Yet, as Marxs late notebooks become more available through the
MEGA2, their careful examination will enable analysts to explain the way
Marxs socialist project envisioned reestablishing the absolute unity in
the metabolic interaction between human beings and nature.

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Notes
1. Cf. Kevin Anderson, Marx at the Margins (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2010), 24752.
2. In addition to Andersons work, see
also: Kolja Lindner, Marxs Eurocentrism:
Postcolonial Studies and Marx Scholarship, Radical Philosophy 161 (May/June
2010): 2741. Through a careful analysis
of Marxs notebooks, Anderson and Lindner convincingly demonstrate that Marxs
view of modernity underwent a significant
change in the 1860s in that he came to
abandon a view of linear historical development. This paper aims to strengthen
Anderson and Lindners interpretation by
examining Marxs reception of agricultural
chemistry.
3. M a r x - E n g e l s - G e s a m t a u s g a b e
(MEGA2) (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, Akademie
Verlag, 1975). A part of the late Marxs
excerpts on natural sciences are available
as MEGA2 IV/26 and 31.
4. The importance of Johnston and Liebig for Marx can be conceived from the
fact that he read them a second time both
Liebigs ber Theorie und Praxis in der
Landwirthschaft (Braunschweig: Verlag
von Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1856) in
1863 (to be published as MEGA2 IV/17)
and Johnstons Elements of Agricultural
Chemistry and Geology, 4th ed. (London:
William Blackwood and Sons, 1856) in
1878 (MEGA2 IV/26). Due to the limited
space, it is not possible to deal with Marxs
Liebig-excerpt of 1863, though it would
more clearly show how careful Marx was
following theoretical changes in Liebigs
agricultural chemistry.
5. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London:
Penguin, 1976), 637.
6. John Bellamy Foster, Marxs Ecology
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), ix.
7. Foster, Marxs Ecology, and Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green
Perspective (Chicago: Haymarket Books,
2014; original edition 1999), chapter 9.
8. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 638.
9. MEGA2 II/5, 410. Marx modified this
expresson in later editions of Capital.
10. Justus von Liebig, Die Chemie in ihrer
Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 7th ed. (Braunschweig: Verlag von
Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1862); Liebig, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie,
4th ed. (Braunschweig: Verlag von Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1842). For Liebigs
later criticisms, see William H. Brock,
Justus von Liebig, the Chemical Gatekeeper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); for his 1851 studies,
see Foster, Marxs Ecology, 149.
11. Without doubt, this paper greatly
owes to recent works on Marxs ecological
thought, especially to Fosters books and

comments. My analysis of Marxs notebooks also confirms his interpretation.

12. Marxs excerpts from Liebig in the
1860s are still in preparation by a Japanese editorial group of the MEGA2 led by
Teinosuke Otani, who also kindly supported my project. Once they appear in
MEGA2 IV/18, it will be possible to deal
with this problem more thoroughly.
13. Michael Perelman, Marxs Crises Theory: Scarcity, Labor, and Finance (New
York: Praeger, 1987), 3435. Another important figure is of course Thomas Robert
Malthus, who also assumes the validity of
the law; see Foster, Marxs Ecology,14244.
14. David Ricardo, On the Principles of
Political Economy, and Taxation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1951), 73.
15. MEGA2 IV/4, 62; James Anderson, A
Calm Investigation of the Circumstances
that Have Led to the Present Scarcity of
Grain in Great Britain (London: John
Cummins, 1801), 3536.
16. MEGA2 IV/9, 119; James Anderson,
An Inquiry into the Causes that have hitherto retarded the Advancement of Agriculture in Europe (Edinburgh: Charles Elliot,
1779), 5.
17. cf. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
Collected Works, vol. 31 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 372, 374.
18. James F.W. Johnston, Notes on North
America (London: William Blackwood
and Sons, 1851).
19. North American Agriculture, The
Economist, no. 401, May 3, 1851, 475.
20. Husbandry in North America, The
Economist, no. 404, May 24, 1851, 559;
emphasis in original.
21. North American Agriculture, 476.
22. MEGA2 IV/8, 87.
23. Ibid, 89. Excerpted passages from
Johnston are for example: An objection
to drainage is made in this country. The
cost of this improvement, even at the
cheapest rate, say 4 l. or 20 dollars an acre
is to a large proportion of the present
price of the best land in this rich district of
Western New York; It is plain that there
is too great an abundance of land, which,
for little labour and with no skill, will produce year after year, moderate crops;
Husbandry by capitalists not yet available in North America. on a larger
scale, farming is not profitable. Beyond
purchasing a farm for their own use there
is no much to be done with land, for renting land is not popular, and, in fact, the
economical condition of North America is
not yet such as to render such a mode of
management necessary or desirable.
See MEGA2 IV/8, 8889.

24. MEGA2 IV/8, 3067; Morton, On the

Nature and Property of Soils, 1st ed. (London: James Ridgway, Piccadilly, 1838),
14041.
25. Ibid. 306, 309, 311, 305; Morton, On
the Nature and Property of Soils, 1st ed.,
130, 20910, 221, 12930.
26. Henry C. Carey, The Past, the Present,
and the Future (Philadelphia: Carey &
Hart, 1848), 3045; for nourishment recycling, see Foster, Marxs Ecology, 153.
27. Carey, The Past, the Present, and the
Future, 3056.
28. Carey, The Past, the Present, and the
Future, 299.
29. MEGA2 IV/8, 746; Carey, The Past, the
Present, and the Future, 129.
30. MEGA2 IV/8, 744; Carey, The Past, the
Present, and the Future, 4849.
31. cf. Perelman, Marxs Crises Theory, 34.
32. Marx and Engels, Collected Works,
vol. 38, 425.
33. Justus von Liebig, Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology,
4th ed. (Cambridge: John Owen, 1843),
33. Humus is the portion of the soil organic matter that is well decomposed
and stable (not subject to more decomposition) and is different in chemistry
from compounds found in the original
material. Humus is now known to be a
chelating agent (can hold plant available
micronutrients such as zinc) and to have a
very high negative charge giving it an
ability to hold onto a lot of cations (positively charged elements such as calcium,
magnesium, and potassium) allowing
them to be held in the soil (not easily
leached out) while still being available
for uptake by the plant.
34. MEGA2 IV/9, 207; Liebig, Chemistry in
its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, 4th ed., 174.
35. MEGA2 IV/9, 209; Liebig, Chemistry in
its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, 4th ed.,182.
36. MEGA2 IV/9, 210; Liebig, Chemistry in
its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, 4th ed.,187; emphasis added.
37. Marx writes down one passage where
Liebig describes the exhausted state of
lands in New England which have produced plenty of wheat and tobacco without manure but become unproductive
without manure after a while (cf. MEGA2
IV/9, 202). Nonetheless, Liebig points out
this fact only to substantiate his demand
for realizing the system of rational culture composed of fallow, crop rotation,
and synthetic fertilizer. In fact, Liebig
does not elucidate any critical comments
to agricultural praxis in modern society
that has caused such exhaustion in New
England.

46 MONTHLY

38. Marx and Engels, Collected Works,

vol. 38, 476.

39. James F.W. Johnston, Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, 2nd ed.
(London: William Blackwood and Sons,
1847); Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, 23rd ed. (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1849).
40. cf. Johnston, Lectures on Agricultural
Chemistry and Geology, 85556.
41. MEGA2 IV/9, 382; Johnston, Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, 44.
42. MEGA2 IV/9, 299; Johnston, Lectures
on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology,
545; emphasis in original.
43. MEGA2 IV/9, 380; Johnston, Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, 38.
44. MEGA2 IV/9, 381; Johnston, Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology, 39.
45. According to Ricardo, although the increase of agricultural productivity through
manures and the improvement of tools is
possible, the natural tendency of profits
to fall can only be checked at repeated
intervals by those countermeasures. See
Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, 1951, 120.
46. Marx and Engels, Collected Works,
vol. 42, 227.
47. Marx knew that Liebig became more
concerned with the difficulty in terms of
recycling minerals for the sake of a lasting fertility of lands by 1860, as he writes
in Herr Vogt: Liebig rightly criticizes the
senseless wastefulness which robs the
Thames of its purity and the English soil
of its manure (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 17, 243). Marx may have
got this information from Liebigs article
in The Times (December 23, 1859). As
Brock points out (Justus von Liebig, the
Chemical Gatekeeper, 259), this article in
which Liebig talks about the question of
the sewage of towns was widely read at
that time. However, Marx does not immediately integrate such an insight by Liebig into his economic manuscripts.
Perelman argues that Marx became more
pessimistic about agricultural production when he was writing the Manuscripts
of 186163. According to Perelman
(Marxs Crises Theory, 3640), it was due
to the cotton famine in 1862 and Marxs
personal hardships during the crisis. In
this context, it is important to indicate
that in 1863 Marx took notes from Li-

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Landwirthschaft, in which he starts much
more clearly emphasizing the danger of
soil exhaustion. Thus, it seems plausible
when Foster argues that Marx changed
his view due to two historical developments in his time: (1) the widening sense
of crisis in agriculture in both Europe and
North America...; and (2) a shift in Liebigs own work in the late 1850s and
early 1860s (Marxs Theory of Metabolic
Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology, American Journal of
Sociology, 105, no.2 [1999]: 376). I hasten to add however, that the impact of
ber Theorie und Praxis upon Marx is
only partial because Liebig remains still
quite optimistic about modern agriculture. For now, I attempt to examine the
issue from another perspective by pointing out the methodological development
of Marxs political economy in analyzing
the entanglement of form and material. Only after grasping the dynamic
transformation of the material world
through the form determination by capital, is Marx able successfully to integrate
Liebigs critique of the exhaustion of soils
into Capital.
48. IISG, Marx-Engels-Nachla, Sign. B
106, 30; Justus von Liebig, Einleitung,
in Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf
Agricultur und Physiologie, 7th ed.
(Braunschweig: Verlag von Friedrich
Vieweg und Sohn, 1862), 1156, 141.
49. IISG, Marx-Engels-Nachla, Sign. B
106, 3031; Liebig, Einleitung, 142.
50. MEGA2 IV/9, 193; Liebig, Chemistry in
its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, 4th ed., 118; emphasis added.
51. Liebig, Einleitung, 106; emphasis
added. This modification actually occurs
in the fifth German edition (1843), which
indicates that Liebig already began to
develop his critical view at that time.
52. Liebig, Chemistry in its Application to
Agriculture and Physiology, 4th ed., 118.
53. IISG, Marx-Engels-Nachla, Sign. B
106, 55; Liebig, Einleitung, 124; emphasis by Marx; for Marxs avoidance of
travel reports, cf. Marx to Engels, February
13, 1866, Collected Works, vol. 42, 227.
54. MEGA2 II/4.3, 239, 712; James F.W.
Johnston, Notes on North America: Agricultural, Economical, and Social, 2 vols.
(London: William Blackwood and Sons,
1851), 47. Marxs expression system of
exhaustion in North America is found in
his Notizen zur Differentialrente created

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2014

in 1868. It clearly conveys Marxs intention

to read Johnstons Notes on North America
as a direct source about the system of exhaustion. The editor of MEGA2 II/4.3, CarlEhrlich Vollgraf, reproduces many parts of
Marxs Johnston-excerpt from 1865, and I
will refer to its pages here.
55. MEGA2 II/4.3, 712; Johnston, Notes
on North America, 54.
56. MEGA2 II/4.3, 713; Johnston, Notes
on North America, 163.
57. Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (London: Penguin, 1981), 754; Johnston, Notes on
North America, 54.
58. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, 911.
59. Ibid., 916.
60. IISG, Marx-Engels-Nachla, Sign. B
106, 54; Liebig, Einleitung, 123.
61. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 638.
62. Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es,
Building Soils for Better Crops (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
Program, 2010), http://sare.org.
63. cf. MEGA2 IV/9, 187; Liebig, Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and
Physiology, 4th ed., 9596.
64. Liebig, Einleitung, 121.
65. Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster,
Ecological Imperialism and the Global
Metabolic Rift: Unequal Exchange and
the Guano/Nitrates Trade, International
Journal of Comparative Sociology 50, no.
34 (2009): 31134.
66. Foster, Marxs Ecology, 163.
67. After fully appropriating Liebigs theory, Marxs Capital also applies it to the
exhausted state of lands in Ireland due to
exporting its agricultural products to England: If the product also diminishes relatively per acre, it must not be forgotten
that for a century and a half England has
indirectly exported the soil of Ireland,
without even allowing its cultivators the
means for making up the constituents of
the exhausted soil. See Marx, Capital,
vol. 1, 860.
68. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political
Economy, and Taxation, 67; emphasis
added.
69. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, 949; emphasis
added.
70. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, 216.
71. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, 949.
72. cf. Marx and Engels, Collected Works,
vol. 34, 246.
73. cf. Burkett, Marx and Nature, chapter 11.