Journal
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS
Volume 105, Issue -, Pages 11-18Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.05.015
Keywords
Technology; Marxism; Ecological economics; Energy; Thermodynamics; Utopianism; Progress; Economic value
Funding
- EU
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Almost regardless of ideological persuasion, the seemingly self-evident concept of technological progress inherited from early industrialism is resorted to as an article of faith serving to dispel the specter of truncated growth. The increasingly acknowledged threats of peak oil and global warming are thus generally countered with visions of a future civilization based on solar power. I discuss this technological scenario as a utopia that raises serious doubts about mainstream understandings of what technology really is. Technological utopianism raises difficult but fundamental analytical questions about the relation between thermodynamics and theories of economic value. While Marxism and some ecological economics share the ambition of grounding notions of economic value in physical parameters, notions of economic value and physical processes should be kept analytically distinct. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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