Substantive inequality and the alienated metabolism of the capital system

Social metabolic analysis has been at the forefront of elucidating the systemic dynamics of the apital system, including how it generates alienation, social inequalities, and ecological rifts. This chapter presents Karl Marx’s political-economic and ecological critique of capital, examining how expropriation and exploitation create a class division, substantive inequality, and environmental degradation at different scales. Capital fundamentally reorganizes the material exchange between human beings and nature, producing an alienated metabolism, as part of its growth imperative. Through expropriation - the enclosure of communal lands, colonialism, violence, slavery, and genocide - and the exploitation of labor, capital’s accumulation process inevitably undermines the earthly and corporeal metabolism, creating historically distinct social inequalities and environmental ruin. Social metabolic analysis challenges capital’s destructive logic, demonstrating that a different social metabolic order, built on substantive equality, the satisfaction of human needs, and protecting the conditions of life, is necessary.