Based on certain intuitions of Marx and Engels, a degree of long-standing acknowledgement of ecological problems has existed within Marxist thought. This acknowledgement led to decisive advances in the 1980s, and the trend is currently going through a significant transformation. As currently formulated, the approach foregrounds three crucial questions : matter as the basis for social life and as a stake in economic exchange ; work as the transformation of the world and as a social relation ; the long-term history of capitalism, as apprehended as the development of variable relations with regard to the appropriation and exploitation of nature. The importance of these three issues demonstrates that the Marxist tradition still constitutes an important resource for contemporary social theory.