The Ecological Crisis as a Consequence of the Potential Industrial-Capitalist Development Exhaustion: Political Economic Aspect

Abstract

The novelty of the work consists in an attempt to substantiate the origin of the ecological crisis from the point of view of political economy. It is seen by the author in the exhaustion of the potential of industrial-capitalist development due to the completion of capitalism's historical mission - industrialization as a special stage in the development of productive forces, and thereby its own history. His goal of profit maximization was generated by the paradigm of economic growth, measured by its iconic indicator of GDP, the limitless increase of which was invariably accompanied by the predatory use of natural resources, which eventually turned into an environmental crisis, now brought to the state of ecological catastrophe. Overcoming it is a function of a different system of economic relations, focused not on profit maximization, not on economic growth, but on balanced socio-ecological and economic development, implemented now by the active introduction of ESG principles, presupposed by the formation of a new economic system in the depths of capitalism, starting from the second half of the twentieth century.