André Gorz’s Labour-Based Political Ecology and Its Legacy for the Twenty-First Century

This chapter critically reviews Andre Gorz’s thinking, in particular his labour-based political ecology, to argue that it belongs within environmental labour studies as a cutting-edge field of inquiry. Based on Gorz’s theoretical toolkit, it discusses the historical transformation of the link between capitalist development, natural environment and working-class struggles. In particular, the chapter focuses on Gorz’s analysis of the ecological crisis as a crisis of capitalist reproduction, whose implications are relevant for a critical understanding of the post-Fordist mode of accumulation. To grasp the ecological dimension of contemporary valorisation—that is, to analyse how physical limits to growth are turned from obstacles to drivers of accumulation—the conclusion connects Gorz’s insights with recent debates on biocapitalism, drawing especially on Melinda Cooper’s contributions.