Nature and the Work Process

Much of modern economic theory proposes a circular flow of exchange. Economics is seen as a repetitive cycle linking money and commodities with households and companies. It is understood as being circular and reversible: a ‘return to capital’ basically means that the original capital spent, augmented by a surplus, returns to its owner and the process of capital valorisation starts all over again, on a greater scale. Yet the circular monetary value aspect of economics is coupled with a physical flow and throughput of matter and energy, which is ultimately linear. And, although it is ‘the linear throughput, not the circular flow of value, that impinges on the environment in the forms of depletion and pollution’, it is the circular flow that ‘has the spotlight [in economic theory], while the concept of throughput is only dimly visible in the shadows’ (Daly, 1985, p. 280). In neoclassical theory especially, the production of goods and services is analysed from the standpoint of the growth of monetary value, which is seen as indefinite, while the roles played by energy and natural resources in this production are usually not mentioned. Hence this type of economic analysis tends to finish at the point where the flows of money stop: ‘the goods and the services produced by human activity only appear in the economic system insofar as they exist in the form of commodities, and they drop out of sight as soon as they lose this quality’ (Deléage, 1994, p. 38).