The Value Problem in Ecological Economics

Perhaps the most vexing question in ecological economics is whether nature is a direct source and/or substance of value. One group ascribes value directly to natural resources and argues that monetary exchange values (prices and profits) largely or fully represent the values extracted from nature. Another group focuses on nature as an objective condition or basis for value defined as psychic income or “enjoyment of life.” This article applies Marx's critique of the Physiocrats to this contemporary debate. It is suggested that both groups of ecological economists do not adequately consider the relations between use value and capitalist valuation. As a result, both are fundamentally uncritical toward market forms of nature valuation and fail to distinguish between environmental crises of capitalist reproduction and capitalistically induced crises in the natural conditions of human development. Marx's dialectical approach to nature, value, and use value provides a potential way out of this impasse.