I just read an interesting letter from Marx to Engels, particularly this fragment was notable
Climate and the Vegetable World throughout the Ages, a History of Both, by Fraas (1847) is very interesting, especially as proving that climate and flora have changed in historic times. He is a Darwinist before Darwin and makes even the species arise in historic times. But he is also an agricultural expert. He maintains that as a result of cultivation and in proportion to its degree, the “damp” so much beloved by the peasant is lost (hence too plants emigrate from south to north) and eventually the formation of steppes begins. The first effects of cultivation are useful, later devastating owing to deforestation, etc. This man is both a thoroughly learned philologist (he has written books in Greek) and a chemist, agricultural expert, etc. The whole conclusion is that cultivation when it progresses in a primitive way and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois of course he does not arrive at this), leaves deserts behind it, Persia, Mesopotamia, etc., Greece. Here again another unconscious socialist tendency!
It’s about fertility of fields, but then again the entire ecology pretty much started there, and as we can see, when entire thing was not even born yet, in 1868, it is abolutely obvious to Marx that only socialism can have any successes in maintaining the environment.
I thought i would share this since it’s interesting how it is now being clearly proven, and maybe it would be of use against the ecofash.
John Bellamy Foster writes quite a bit on the topic in Marx’s Ecology.