Ecological rift and human alienation from nature: a materialistic understanding

Abstract

A deep chasm is felt in the relation between nature and human due to excessive depletion of nature with the aid of modern technological advances that coincide with the capitalist growth process. The chasm is described by John Bellamy Foster as ‘ecological rift’. With the growing awareness about the ecological rift, the environmentalists try to address the issue in various ways –ranging from the advocacy of moralistic use of nature by humans to the minimal/austere use of nature, from gazing back on the conceptions and use of natural resources by the pre-modern and indigenous communities to the suggestions about transplanting them in the present epoch, and from the advocacy of preservation of natural resources to the consideration of nature as a separate entity that needs the positive intervention of humans to restore its pristine growth. However, what is lacking in such future-oriented prescriptive endeavours is the lack of scientific and materialistic understanding of the complex web of nature-human-society relationship. Hence natural history needs to be studied along with the social history, in spite of the fact that there is an active change within the nature itself. This paper attempts to propose that the ecological rift cannot be addressed through moralistic compass nor techno-capitalism, without addressing the contradictions that exist in the nature-human relationship in the capitalist mode of production and its social praxis.