A Marxist precursor of energy economics: Podolinsky

This article reviews some recent work on the energy analysis of agriculture, which shows that the efficiency of ‘modern’ agriculture is inferior to that of ‘traditional’ agriculture. We consider one of the first examples of energy accounting in agriculture (published by Sergei Podolinsky one hundred years ago), and we evaluate Engels’ reaction to it, in correspondence with Marx. This article is, then, an attempt to explore whether energy analysis can be fitted into the Marxist framework, and our conclusion is that Marxism would have to be much revised since there are epistemological obstacles (the use of categories from Political Economy, such as ‘production’, ‘labour‐value’, ‘capital') and ideological obstacles (the vision of a two‐stage transition to communist abundance and equality). Although some Marxist anthropologists have used energy analysis, most Marxist economic historians and economists have not, i. e. they have not looked critically at the notion of ‘development of productive forces’. We trace the origins of this divorce between Marxism and ecology.