Marx and Engels’ conception of communism from the beginning was consistent with the sustainability. For example in 1843, Engels wrote in the Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy that communism would be “the reconciliation of mankind with nature and with itself”. (MECW 3 p.424) Soon after that, Marx wrote in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts that communism “restores man's intimate links to the land in a rational way, no longer mediated by serfdom, lordship, and an imbecile mystique of property. This is because the earth ceases to be an object of barter, and through free labour and free employment once again becomes authentic, personal property for man.” (MECW 3 p.268)
These views were developed in his mature political economy. In Capital III, Marx wrote that: “From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private ownership 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].” A society of freely associated producers would “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control, instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.” (1981 p.911, p.959)
Paul Burkett argues that it is possible to integrate sustainable development into the conception of communism. Ecologists conceive of sustainable development in terms of: (i) the ‘common good’ character of natural resources; (ii) co-evolution of individual human beings, society and nature; (iii) common property management of natural resources. Marx and Engels’ vision of communism combines these dimensions. First, “communism protects the individual’s right to a share in the total product for her private consumption”. Communist property promotes individual human development by “assuring all individuals access to the expanded social services – education, health care, utilities, and old-age pensions”. Third, communist property includes “the individual’s right to progressively shorter working time”. (2006 p.15, pp.322-324)
Crucially, the emphasis on free time as the touchstone of communism allows reconciles the new society with sustainability. It is also consistent with Marx’s own conception of freedom. In his Economic Manuscripts 1861-63, effectively the second draft of Capital, Marx wrote that: “Free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which – unlike labour – is not dominated by the pressure of an extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfilment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty.” (MECW 32 p.391)
Marx believed that human needs would expand massively under socialism but this referred primarily to the needs of self-realisation, which does not necessitate the expansion of resource consumption. The preservation or restoration of a healthy environment would count as the satisfaction of a human need.
Locked in the bowels of Stalin’s prison in 1937, Bukharin summed up the integration of socialism with ecology very well:
“Socialism at a particular stage of its historical development sets itself the conscious task of both enriching nature and promoting natural diversity as one of the most important conditions for the development of a complete and integrated human being. Wilderness areas or natural preserves, the development of forest science and forest management, the creation of green spaces in cities, the protection of plants and animals, a socialistically cultured attitude toward nature as the immense source of biological life, of health, and of artistic gratification – all of this finds its appropriate place in the overall culture of socialism...
“First, the exhaustion of natural resources (for example petroleum, wood for fuel, etc) will provide the impulse for a transition to other forms of energy; second, widespread demands for the preservation of nature (forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, etc), the elimination of a purely urban way of life, the need for the enjoyment of nature, and the further development of that enjoyment will grow gigantically, and again this will bring to the fore a number of huge new questions; third, the development of the productive forces in and of itself will create new needs, which simply cannot be predicted in advance...
“The tempos of development will be expressed in the tempos of the growing fullness of life in rational forms, that is, forms that are in keeping with the goals of society, and that will include society’s success in combating the negative inheritance of capitalist urban life and obsession with machinery (the fight against pollution and the contamination of nature, against noise pollution, against congestion and overcrowding, the fight for sunshine, sunlight, fresh air, greenery and water).” (Socialism and its culture 2006 p.104-05, p.172, p.194)
