caa a22 4500 386365016 CHVBK 20180307111929.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130s1989 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0012217300012555 doi S0012217300012555 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0012217300012555 Catton Philip University of Western Ontario Marxist Critical Theory, Contradictions, and Ecological Succession [Elektronische Daten] [Philip Catton] Marx called a social pattern "contradictory” if the conditions of its maintenance are also key ingredients for its demise. The science of ecology, too, studies patterns the conditions for whose maintenance are also key ingredients for their demise. The historical materialist notion of contradiction has a close counterpart in the ecological notion of succession. Succession is a process by which the structure of a biological community—both niche structure and species structure—changes as a result of each species' modification of the habitat. Just by living, each species members alters its environment, and in non-climax communities these effects, summed over all living things, constitute disequilibria. The habitat changes, and with it the niche structure. Gradually the species structure of the community changes. Each seral stage, with its distinctive species structure, requires for its maintenance the ongoing existence of living members of each species in the structure; yet this condition is the key ingredient for succession, for the demise of the seral stage. Succession results, in effect, from contradictions that are present in each seral stage. (For an illustrative example of seral stages and biological succession, see the Appendix.) Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1989 Dialogue Cambridge University Press 28/4(1989), 637-654 0012-2173 28:4<637 1989 28 DIA https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217300012555 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217300012555 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Catton Philip University of Western Ontario NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Dialogue Cambridge University Press 28/4(1989), 637-654 0012-2173 28:4<637 1989 28 DIA CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge