Capital incorporates both land and labor into its self-expanding body. But the result is a metabolic rift.
The separation of town and country, and the domination of the country
by the town, interrupts molecular flows and depletes the soil.
Competitive capitalism is not really compatible with sustainable
agriculture, as Marx already knew from his studies of Leibig. At the
time, artificial fertilizer appeared as a fix, but it is temporary. The
phosphorus and nitrogen extracted from the soil in agriculture still
ends up in the shit and piss of the urban proletariat, which still
mostly drains off into the sea, to the point where the metabolic rift in
the phosphorus and nitrogen cycles starts to become a serious
constraint and one of the marks of the Anthropocene.Labor is in one aspect a natural force, with natural needs. Humans
eat and drink and need shelter. Yet labor is a social force also, and
social production changes human needs. The feudal peasants satisfied
many needs through their own communal handiwork, but the industrial
proletariat is stripped of those capacities, and appears with quite
different, socially determined needs. “Marx’s conception of labor and
labor power as natural and social forces thus encapsulates the
peculiarly historical character and potential of humanity as a natural
yet self-positing and social species.” (54) This is what Henri Lefebvre
understood as a dialectic of need and desire.