Ecologically Unequal Exchange Theory: A Rejoinder to Hornborg

ABSTRACT Hornborg’s concepts of ecologically unequal exchange and social-material metabolism are incoherent and therefore of no scientific value. Capitalism creates real expanding value through labour exploitation, and this is the main source of economic and social inequality. Issues such as the distinctiveness of value under capitalism, the difference between labour and labour-power, and between exploitation and appropriation, are important for understanding capitalism and how to go beyond capitalism. They should not be obscured and subsumed under fanciful conceptual hybrids.