{"id":10870,"date":"2026-05-17T19:41:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T19:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culturalleft.org\/cl\/2026\/05\/17\/war-against-nature-marxist-theory-and-the-ecological-crisis-reviews-culture-socialist-worker\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T19:41:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T19:41:56","slug":"war-against-nature-marxist-theory-and-the-ecological-crisis-reviews-culture-socialist-worker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturalleft.org\/cl\/2026\/05\/17\/war-against-nature-marxist-theory-and-the-ecological-crisis-reviews-culture-socialist-worker\/","title":{"rendered":"War against nature \u2013 Marxist theory and the ecological crisis Reviews & Culture – Socialist Worker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Angus\n

Angus uses the latest scientific research in extending Marxist ecological analysis<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Your new book is centred on the multiple environmental crises caused by capitalism. How bad is it?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

For nearly 12,000 years, since the last ice age, conditions on Earth have been \u00adfavourable for human development.<\/p>\n

This has enabled the invention of agriculture and the growth of large, complex societies.<\/p>\n

Today, environmental change, driven by capitalism\u2019s \u00adinexorable drive to expand at all costs, is undermining those conditions.<\/p>\n

Like an autoimmune disease that attacks the body it dwells in, capitalism is tearing apart the very planet that feeds it.<\/p>\n

Scientists have identified nine environmental \u00adconditions that define a \u201csafe operating space for humanity\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is threatened by the \u00adwarming caused by \u00adgreenhouse gas emissions, the acidification of the oceans, the extinction of plant and animal species.<\/p>\n

Limits on these and other changes must be respected to maintain a habitable Earth.<\/p>\n

Eight of the nine \u00adboundaries have already been breached. There is serious concern that \u00adviolating any one of them, or a \u00adcombination of them, could lead to a tipping point from which there would be no possible return.<\/p>\n

The global situation is bad and rapidly getting worse. Changes are happening much faster than scientists predicted a decade ago. And the impact is felt most severely by the world\u2019s \u00adpoorest people, those who have done the least to cause the crisis.<\/p>\n

If nothing is done soon, substantial parts of the globe will be uninhabitable and life on the entire planet will be very difficult indeed.<\/p>\n

At the heart of your analysis is Karl Marx\u2019s \u201cmetabolic rift\u201d theory. Can you explain its relevance for activists today?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Metabolic rift theory \u00adprovides an essential \u00adframework for \u00adunderstanding environmental crises.<\/p>\n

It shows how and why \u00adcapitalism is engaged in an unceasing war against nature.<\/p>\n

Life and the \u00adenvironmental \u00adconditions that sustain life depend on metabolic cycles, in which essential \u00admaterials are constantly recycled.<\/p>\n

For example, through \u00adnatural processes, including the breath of plants and \u00adanimals, our planet emits and absorbs over 350 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.<\/p>\n

For millions of years, emission and absorption have been roughly balanced. The carbon cycle makes life on earth possible by constantly circulating and reusing the matter and energy that life requires.<\/p>\n

Capitalism, in contrast, is linear\u2014any part of \u00adproduction that doesn\u2019t contribute to profit is discarded, not \u00adrecycled.<\/p>\n

As the Marxist philosopher Istvan Meszaros wrote, the \u00admeasure of capitalism\u2019s advance is \u201cthe efficacy with which waste can be generated and \u00addissipated on a monumental scale\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most notably, capital\u2019s \u00addependence on fossil fuels \u00adproduces carbon dioxide as waste, far more than \u00adnatural \u00adprocesses can absorb.<\/p>\n

So, it is building up in the atmosphere and the ocean, causing global \u00adwarming and reducing the \u00adnutrient levels in major food crops.<\/p>\n

There is a massive rift in the carbon cycle caused by \u00adcapitalism\u2019s inability to produce without \u00adgenerating ever more pollution.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve tried to show in my book, the concept of \u00admetabolic rifts gives us tools for \u00adunderstanding the causes of \u00adenvironmental \u00addegradation. And it provides guidance on how our global crises can be solved.<\/p>\n

You follow Marx and Frederick Engels in using the latest scientific research in extending a Marxist ecological analysis. How are scientists responding to environmental crisis?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The first thing to note, of course, is that there is no \u00adsignificant \u00adscientific disagreement about the \u00adgrowing \u00adclimate crisis.<\/p>\n

No \u00adcredible \u00adscientist denies that global \u00adwarming is real and that the cause is greenhouse gas \u00ademissions \u00adproduced by industry and agriculture.<\/p>\n

The science is as certain as anything we know how about the Earth system.<\/p>\n

Scientists have been very active in \u00adpressing for action to reduce emissions rapidly, warning the failure to do so could have \u00adcatastrophic results.<\/p>\n

Many now warn that \u00adfailing to change may lead to \u00adunstoppable climate change, no matter what action we take.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s \u00admissing from most \u00adscientific \u00adproposals, \u00adhowever, is a clear vision of the political and social changes that must be made. There are exceptions. Climatologist Kate Marvel recently resigned from Nasa in protest at Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on climate science. She has written that we need a world \u201cwhere the power to make decisions about the \u00adclimate is invested in the people, not corporations or billionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can hope that she and other scientists will help to build a \u00admovement with that end in view.<\/p>\n

The eco-socialist left, in my view, needs to put strong efforts into winning scientists to radical conclusions.<\/p>\n

You argue that revolution will not see the immediate end of the crisis, but the beginning. How might that look?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The founders of the \u00adsocialist \u00admovement were reluctant to predict what the transition to socialism might be like.<\/p>\n

As Marx famously said, he didn\u2019t want to write cookbooks for the chefs of the future.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what the exact \u00adcircumstances will be, so we can\u2019t provide detailed instructions.<\/p>\n

But what we do know is that after \u00adcapitalism any new \u00adsociety will inherit a severely damaged planet. Many of the changes are already irreversible.<\/p>\n

For \u00adexample, there is no way to stop \u00adglaciers and ice sheets from melting, which means that the oceans will rise and coastal cities will eventually be submerged.<\/p>\n

If capitalism\u2019s destructive operations continue for much longer, there will be many such problems to address. And repairing the damage will take \u00addecades, even under the most favourable conditions.<\/p>\n

The German socialist Walter Benjamin famously wrote that a real revolution means \u00adgrabbing the emergency brake, to stop capitalism from driving humanity\u2019s train to disaster.<\/p>\n

The primary activity of a \u00adrevolutionary society, then, must be to reroute the train, to an \u00adecologically sound destination.<\/p>\n