The Production of Nature Neil

“Scientific truth”, Marx wrote in a famous statement, “is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things” (Marx, 1899, 54). The idea of the production of nature is indeed paradoxical, to the point of sounding absurd, if judged by the superficial appearance of nature even in capitalist society. Nature is generally seen as precisely that which cannot be produced; it is an antithesis of human productive activity. It its most immediate appearance, the natural landscape presents itself to us as the material substratum of daily life, the realm of use-values [usefulness of something] rather than exchange-values [the value derived from the market sale of something]. As such it is highly differentiated along any number of axes. But with the progress of capital accumulation and the expansion of economic development, this material substratum is more and more the product of social production, and the dominant axes of differentiation are increasingly societal in origin. In short, when this immediate appearance of nature is placed in historical context, the development of the material landscape presents itself as a process of the production of nature. [...]