Civil Society and the Metabolic Relationship Between Human Beings and Nature

As environmental and ecological crises deepen, there is a growing awareness that the relationship between humans and nature under modern civilization and capitalism needs to be fundamentally reset. At the same time, there is growing reflection and criticism of the anthropocentric and nature-dominated ideas of traditional social sciences. Without exception, Marx is often a target of criticism. In response to this, Marx’s “theory of metabolism” has come under renewed scrutiny, and new studies related to this theory are flourishing. I wonder, however, whether these new studies have not forgotten to learn from Yoshihiko Uchida, for whom the theory of material metabolism was the core of his work. Throughout his life, from his youth when he was searching for an academic theme, to his later years, Yoshihiko Uchida made the “material metabolism of human beings and nature” the basic perspective of his social science. Moreover, his theory of metabolism went beyond the realm of literary research, becoming the fundamental perspective of his perception of society and history, and his theory of civil society was inseparable from the perspective of the “metabolism of human beings and nature.” From this viewpoint, this chapter will first follow Marx’s perception of the human-nature relation from the early-mid period (‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’ and Grundrisse of 1857–1858) to the late period (Capital) to see how he perceived the disturbance of material metabolism under capitalism, and therefore the inevitable reconstruction of metabolism (Sect. 3.2). Based on this, I will show how Uchida, who learned the concept of “metabolism” from Marx, has been using it as his own basic perspective in all directions, in line with his three major research interests of Smith, Marx, and Hajime Kawakami (Sect. 3.3). Finally, the chapter reviews and affirms his concept of “civil society as a rational management system of metabolism between humans and nature” (Sect. 3.4). This is followed by a short conclusion (Sect. 3.5).