 Ecological economics, Marxism, and technological progress: Some explorations of the conceptual foundations of theories of ecologically unequal exchangeAlf Hornborg Ecological Economics, 2014, vol. 105, issue C, 11-18 Abstract: Almost regardless of ideological persuasion, the seemingly self-evident concept of “technological progress” inherited from early industrialism is resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth. The increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power. I discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about mainstream understandings of what “technology” really is. Technological utopianism raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relation between thermodynamics and theories of economic value. While Marxism and some ecological economics share the ambition of grounding notions of economic value in physical parameters, notions of economic value and physical processes should be kept analytically distinct. Keywords: Technology; Marxism; Ecological economics; Energy; Thermodynamics; Utopianism; Progress; Economic value (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:105:y:2014:i:c:p:11-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.05.015 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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