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by capitalist forces, was Marx's famous answer to Thomas Malthus's equally
famous theory of poverty as an expression of poor families having increased their
number beyond the capacity of the natural resource base that sustains them.
Malthusianism remains a popular idea, especially in the 'developed' world; it is one
most Marxists reject out of hand [see the important works of Harvey, 1974; Watts,
1983].) Forces of production are therefore instrumental in the emergence of an
industrial working class. But the idea is that this is an inherently contradictory
situation. Not only is there a struggle over who gets to keep surplus value. Marx
held out the possibility that working people and forces of production could become
a joint force capable of rendering capitalists, or more properly the specifi c social
role a capitalist plays, obsolete.
In contrast to the 'fi rst contradiction' between forces and relations of production,
ecological Marxism (see footnote 11 in O'Connor [1997] for background on this
term) focuses on a 'second contradiction', between capitalist production relations
(including productive forces) and conditions of capitalist production. The prolifera-
tion of terms here is a bit unfortunate but not impossible to sort out. Conditions
of capitalist production refers to the ability of capitalist social relations and forces
of production to be sustained and reproduced; it is the question of what must be
accomplished so that capital can be reproduced.
Marx himself, according to O'Connor, defi ned three types of production condi-
tions. First are natural factors external to capital appropriated for use within capital.
Marx termed these 'external physical conditions'. 'Personal conditions of produc-
tion,' second, is a term reserved to describe workers' labour power, and the where-
withal to reproduce it. The third condition is 'the communal, general condition of
social production' (O'Connor, 1997, p. 160). This consists of such things as the
means and capacity to communicate and enter into association with other human
beings by virtue of the wider human made landscape. In other words, what must be
in place for capital to be produced at all are viable, functioning natural/ecological
systems, human mental and bodily being, and sociality itself. The concern for the
environment by ecological Marxism is part of a broad remit; it makes no easy distinc-
tion between natural and social environment, wild and urban environment and so on.
O'Connor emphasises that 'neither human labour power nor external nature nor
infrastructures, including their space/time dimensions, are produced capitalistically,
although capital treats these conditions of production as if they are commodities or
commodity capital' (p. 164). In so doing, production conditions regularly become
stressed or despoiled, generating counter-movements. These movements form the
real substance of the second contradiction. Most especially, the state steps in to
regulate capital's treatment of production conditions or social movements push back
against capital, or both. 'This means that whether or not raw materials and needed
labour skills and useful spatial and infrastructural confi gurations are available to
capital in requisite quantities and qualities and at the right times and places depends
on the political power of capital, the power of social movements that challenge
particular capitalist forms of production condition, [and] state structures that mediate
or screen struggles over the defi nition and use of production conditions' (p. 165).
Unlike the direct confrontation between capital and labour in the production
process, which is viewed as an act of private exchange outside politics, the second
contradiction of capitalism is politicised by defi nition, precisely because capital
encounters conditions that it cannot make for itself, but that matter a great deal to
ordinary people - a domain of intensely held values that capitalist value does not make
