The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World

by Andreas Malm

An attack on the idea that nature and society are impossible to distinguish from each other

In a world careening towards climate chaos, nature is dead. It can no longer be separated from society. Everything is a blur of hybrids, where humans possess no exceptional agency to set them apart from dead matter. But is it really so? In this blistering polemic and theoretical manifesto, Andreas Malm develops a counterargument: in a warming world, nature comes roaring back, and it is more important than ever to distinguish between the natural and the social. Only with a unique agency attributed to humans can resistance become conceivable.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Environment, Ecology, Philosophy, Theory, Climate Change

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 13, 2018

About the author

Andreas Malm teaches Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author, with Shora Esmailian, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War and of Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andreas Malm argues that, much like my home, critical theory is insufficiently resilient to climate change. This review has been delayed by the current UK heatwave. My top floor flat in a 19th century tenement was 26 degrees yesterday evening, simply too hot to concentrate on theory, so I re-watched Snowpiercer instead. These are not conditions that I anticipated when I moved to Scotland.

Malm’s argument is essentially that Marxism and metabolic rift theory offer the best philosophical exposition of climate change, while constructionism, new materialism, and hybridism are unhelpful to the point of being nonsensical. He lays into Bruno Latour especially hard, which I found quite entertaining in a slightly mean-spirited way. Surely anyone claiming their sweeping theory explains reality must expect challenge. Malm grounds his critique very strongly in the science of climate change and the urgent dangers it raises for humanity – which are of course a hell of a lot worse than my sleep being disrupted by some warm nights:

It is precisely because they are continuous parts of the overall material world that the social and the natural intertwine, but only by keeping them analytically distinct can we differentiate between those aspects of the world that humans have constructed – i.e. the emergent properties of society – and those generated by forces and causal powers independent of them – i.e. the emergent properties of nature – and examine how these have, at ever more complex levels, become braided. Adapting his project to the age of climate change, Latour maintains ‘there is not a single case where it is useful to make a distinction between what is “natural” and what “is not natural”’. He thinks that this age is the final nail in the coffin of the distinction. In reality, it is precisely the other way around. Maximising the prospects for survival presupposes that we become more alert than ever to the dichotomy between what people create through and though and what is not their doing. That does not mean, of course, that a warming planet can be literally cut in two halves – if that were possible, we wouldn’t be in this predicament – but that analysis of it must execute a similar operation. ExxonMobil in one corner, vulnerable permafrost in the other.

Perhaps the most crucial theme is that nature as a concept must not be dismissed. Claims that nature no longer exists because of human intervention, or that humans construct nature entirely, are an impediment to understanding climate change:

If we take Casetree at his word – climate change is not a process in biophysical reality that occurs regardless of our representations of it, but an invention of the human mind: for such is all nature – these corollaries [that climate change would cease if we stopped believing in it] follow by necessity. It is unlikely that he would endorse them, which suggests that his argument about nature makes rather little sense of it, drawn as he is into the most banal form of the epistemic fallacy: just because we come to know about global warming through measurements and comparisons and concepts and deductions, it is in itself made up of those things.

Pragmatically, this book also acknowledges that theory is hardly the priority right now and devotes several chapters to the politics of climate change:

There is that itching feeling that the only meaningful thing to do now is to let go of everything else and physically cut off fossil fuel combustion, deflate the tires, block the runways, lay siege to the platforms, invade the mines. […] All has already been said; now is the time for confrontation. This essay presents no arguments for restraining such impulses. It is, however, written in the belief that some theories can make the situation clearer while others might muddy it. […] Theory can be part of the problem.

Although it is sometime pleasurable to read theory for the sake of learning new words and exploring obscure concepts, it does frustrate me when the dense language conceals a total lack of usefulness. I appreciate Malm’s impatience with philosophies that manifestly fail to describe one of the greatest threats to human civilisation. He articulates this systematically and with impressive clarity, given the complexity of the topic.

Humans did not create coal or oil or nature as a whole; we created an economy reliant on fossil fuels. This distinction is crucial and, it seems, not entertained in several popular currents of philosophy. This suggests that the philosophical world has perhaps not given the environment a great deal of consideration while contemplating reality as a whole. Moreover, I concluded from this books that much theory is either absolutely anthropocentric (humans create everything through discourse etc) or the absolute opposite (humans and inanimate objects are both actors etc). Basic common sense throws major doubt of both perspectives when they are applied to climate change. Coal existed long before humans did. We just chose to burn it. And the coal did not choose to be burnt. I oversimplify Malm here, however this is the essence of his points. I found the detail interesting and valuable, but would say that this is a book of more esoteric appeal than Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. The latter is a favourite of mine and I recommend it widely. ‘The Progress of This Storm’ is accessible outside academia, while still being quite technical. I found it informative and rewarding. Despite covering a very depressing subject and largely consisting of disagreement with existing philosophies, it isn’t debilitatingly negative. The anger of the tone is in fact invigorating.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that vigorously throws scathing glances and cutting remarks at the closest of Malm's apparent mortal enemies: the "constructionists" (as social scientists call them) of post-French philosophy, the branch of researchers following Bruno Latour, those unreconstructed new materialists, posthumanists and hybridity theorists who, unlike the fiery Andreas Malm, believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of nature and society, humanity and all those things and creatures not human. It is almost an allergic reaction and it is unsubtle, at times brutal, and much of value is denigrated, but fundamentally Malm's point is to maintain the strict separation of Nature and Society in a metaphysical mode of activist exhortation.

I'm not opposed to the impulse and Malm's insights are important and frequently right-headed, but it's a blanket allergy against academics that provides the textbook frustration of the disempowered: to lash out against those closest to one's own position. Latour might be suspect in many of his observations, but Latour is not single-handedly responsible for the weakness and vulnerabilities of theory. At worst, the branches of theoretical inquiry that Malm blasts with vitriol take up space that activist agency could occupy.

If the above debates don't strike your interest, avoid this -- or just read the concluding two chapters, which have a different, more... constructive agenda ;) And perhaps read Malm's other book, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, which is excellent.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finally finished this, after shelving it for some months. Malm does an excellent job in unveiling the silliness of some philosophical strains of academic ecologism, but I hope history will prove it didn't need to be done. As he himself admits: Negri, Latour, Morton and all the other "new materialists"/"dissolutionists"/etc have zero traction with serious political movements, precisely because their thinking is anti-practical. Anyone willing to be disarmed by it was never close to using their arms in the first place. As with many other ivory tower-hobbies, academic ecological philosophy is a passtime for privileged over-educated masters of trained helplessness, and I say that coming from that precise world. The argument that green politics can only be realised at the cost of working people is infinitely more potent and harmful than any ideology in this book.

Point of critique towards Malm is that he himself succumbs to idealistic vagueness. In the last chapter, he ruminates on how eco-politics can only be negative, not positive, that we need to allow ourselves to panic, that we need to confront ourselves with shocking images from the frontlines of the climate catastrophe. But this holds only true, barely, from the perspective of an individual psychological purity test: unless wedded to concrete active long-term organising, ie a workers' or communist party, even the most radical of convictions fail to generate any result. And given that eco-politics must be built on the broad working classes, the 99%, it cannot be 'negative' - who would ever trade in status quo austerity for green austerity? (petty bourgeois academics is who) Eco-politics must deliver gains for all working people in the immediate and long term, which happily is entirely within the scope of building a militant socialist movement and state. Cfr this wonderful paper: https://catalyst-journal.com/vol3/no1... (Eng) https://lavamedia.be/ecologie-voor-he... (NL/FR).

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read Malm’s book slowly, having time to ponder chapter after chapter. It must be said that Malm is an excellent writer, and he must be praised for the manner he managed to present a very dense, ambitious and theoretically loaded subject in what I would call “plain-speak”. His introduction alone is pure bliss to read, both in form and content. I also see why Malm is angry. Angry and set for battle. The “warming condition” as he calls it demands wrath to be let loose. In an ambitious sweep he summarized various theoretical threads of postmodernism (constructivism, new materialism, hybridism, posthumanism) and tried to show where they all failed...mainly, in recognizing that natures’ autonomous existence from humanity and even from capital. Thinking of nature as separate from the social realm, helps Malm demand the acknowledgement of climate realism: humans are responsible for climate change, and it’s up to the them to act now and fix it. No room for climate denial, dilution of responsibility, fatalism when faced with a daunting task etc. Suck it up and get to work. The road is hard, long and uncertain. Taking the trip is urgent. Like a knight in a fairy tale, he sets upon slaying a few dragons he deems responsable for the wide spread of idea in the academic world that nature has agency or that it is somehow inseparable from the human or the social realm. The main villain of this saga is...Bruno Latour. Surprisingly for me, Jason Moore was guilty of a crime almost as big. Other heads rolled, including those of Donna Haraway but in a less spectacular fashion... throughout the book I was left wondering... isn’t Malm burning to many bridges? Aren’t there some friendly faces amongst all those foes?...For the fun of it, i think it would be very interesting to try to draw the similarities and complémentarities between Malms position, the Chthulucene of Haraway (an era of refugees, humans and non-humans saving what is left of nature) and even some of the capitalocene logics of Moore (namely nature as matrix), all the while maybe adding to the mix Mievilles salvage - (salvation+garbage)... in any case, it was a fascinating, dense read, its bibliography will be fueling me for months to come in extra reading material...for those who haven’t read Malm / Jason Moore / anthropocene/capitalocene discussion before, start maybe with the Bonneuil and Fressoz excellent short theoretical manual: The Shock of the Anthropocene....

[Tero Toivanen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended! Inspiring all-out attack on constructionist, new materialist, and posthumanist understandings of nature and society. Necessary reading for those engaged on historical environmental studies or environmental/social movements.

[Mauricio Ortega · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro bien pudo haberse llamado "Bruno Latour, te odio con todo mi corazón y cuando te vea te voy agarrar a golpes", y ni Andreas Malm ni sus editores hubieran tenido problema alguno con publicarlo bajo este título. El odio que le tiene a este académico francés es impresionante y no duda en dejarlo claro desde los primeros capítulos. Al inicio era chistoso, pero conforme avanzaban las páginas se volvió algo molesto, inclusive ridículo. Es una lástima porque la crítica que hace a sus argumentos son bastante interesantes. En realidad el libro es buenísimo. Andreas es pragmático y lúcido con sus ideas. Me agradó lo mucho que ahonda en la filosofía y el uso del materialismo histórico para entender la crisis climática global, así como las varias críticas que hace a las nuevas corrientes del pensamiento que él tanto despecha por la "hibridación sinsentido" de la dualidad humano-naturaleza. Me gusta esa mordacidad con la que escribe, pero una cosa es refutar los argumentos y otra es atacarlos con repudio, desbordando en el odio hacia los autores. Durante todo el rato que leí este libro no pude dejar de pensar que este hombre necesita que le den un buen abrazo. Si alguien anda en Suecia, háganlo por favor.

[Zéro Janvier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Après avoir lu et apprécié trois essais précédents d'Andreas Malm, j'ai été déçu par celui-ci. Le propos est intéressant, mais beaucoup trop théorique et conceptuel pour moi. J'ai dû m'accrocher pour maintenir ma concentration en lisant certains chapitres, et j'ai fini par survoler les derniers.

[Rhys · Rating 2 out of 5]

Malm’s general thesis: “Whatever is this thing called nature? How does it relate to society? Who are the genuinely powerful players in the drama that weaves the two together; how do humans attach to material objects; are technologies or relations running the show; what constitutes an ecological crisis; what can we ever know about any of all this? Here we find various forms of constructionism, actor-network theory, new materialism, posthumanism, the metabolic rift, capitalism as world-ecology and a host of other conceptual apparatuses, all trying to come to grips with the imbroglio between the social and the natural. Can any of them provide a map of the path the storm is taking?” (p.15).

He goes on to explore these different 'conceptual apparatuses' by cudgeling anything ‘postmodern’. I would bet that the authors of the works he characterizes and caricatures would be surprised by the hyperventilating arguments Malm offers. As I understand it, this book seems to be an effort to say that Nature is ‘real’ and ‘autonomous without agency’, whereas the human species has agency. And that humans can cause nature to change, and nature can change what humans can cause (dialectically), but nature cannot know that is causes anything because only humans can know and provide meaning to events.

I am at a loss, however, to understand that parsing ‘substance monism and property dualism’ and ‘hybridism vs. relationalism’ will do anything to further humanity to respond to climate disruption. Malm, it seems, believes constructivism, new materialism, Latourianism, and other explorations of how humans do and ought to relate to nature is a ‘drag’ on human action. I'm not so sure that these concepts have ever entered the parlance of the capitalist elite.

This book may have felt good to write in his academic relation to ‘postmodernists’, though it may have benefited with more exclamation marks. I have pre-ordered How to Blow Up a Pipeline by this author. I hope he focuses on galvanizing action against capital and leaves this bugbear behind.

[Lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Less of Latour, more of Lenin: that is what the warming condition calls for.

I wanted to get back into reading non-fiction after reading pretty much only fiction for a couple of years, so I decided to start 2020 off with digging into this book. The only thing I knew before starting was that it was about climate change and that several of my friends loved it: little did I know that the first parts of the book would be an angry Marxist polemic ripping Bruno Latour and other vapid theorists into shreds?

The focus of the book is obviously climate change, but Malm's angle on the issue here is to first determine what "nature" is and how humans and labour relate to it. Various philosophers and theorists get picked apart along the way, and while I found that a lot of the theories being discussed were incredibly dense (and quite honestly almost nonsensical at times), I can hardly fault Malm for that. His own writing is very clear and direct for such a heavy subject.

If you aren't interested in these philosophical discussions, I would still recommend the introduction and last two chapters, as they are more concrete about looking forward and working on ridding the world of fossil capitalism. But the polemic roast chapters are almost funny at times, if it wasn't for the feeling of dread that comes with reading about liberal idealists filling the climate movement with weak bullshit.

Essential reading during this time of warming, very much recommended.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fed up with complexity, ambiguity and imagination? Have an intellectual inferiority complex about people in the academy writing stuff you don't get? Or maybe you're just tired of trying to think and feel your way around the fucked up state of this planet?

Well, this might be just the book you're looking for. As a bonus, it has the intellectual agility and passion of an alpha male rhino trying to battle twenty different flocks of birds flying a thousand feet above its head.

***

Apologies for the sarcasms, but this book is just plain stupid, and harmfully so. It promotes anti-intellectualism in a way that mimics actual thinking, and many people seem to fall for its simple tricks.

If you're actually interested in finding ways to orient yourself intellectually and emotionally in the ongoing ecological crisis, why not try reading some of the authors slaughtered in this book? You might find that they say very different things both from each other and from what this book claims they are saying.

[Kai · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do think Malm has some really important things to say, but his utter vitriol - at times bordering on disingenuity - completely undermines his most salient arguments. Written with fire and brimstone - see other reviews, it is “scathing” “an attack” “heads roll” etc. eye roll inducing in that characteristically masculine way. Screeds against “academics” and their conferences are particularly confounding to find in what can only be described as a totally academic book (despite its supposed promises, this is not a political theory for those fighting climate change). The Progress of this Storm is an actively bad book and it bums me out. Do better.

[Hugo Frère · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'hésitais entre 3 et 4 en vrai, parce que la fin est bien mais y'a des passages très fouillis et un milieu vraiment pas convaincant où il reprend des auteur·rices et on dirait un peu qu'il sélectionne les phrases qui l'arrangent pour en conclure des choses qui parfois semblent même aller contre ce que la personne voulait dire.
Mais, content d'avoir lu Malm + faut aussi avoir une bonne base sur bcp de terme que personne n'utilise donc j'ai surement raté plein de trucs. Parce que quand tu passes + de temps à lire des définitions que le livre c'est que c'est pas le bon livre.
P.S. : il fait 200 pages pas 250, les 50 dernières c'est la bibliographie

[Jooseppi Räikkönen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Malm is right about everything, though never takes the time to say why in enough detail. Fight me.

Also interesting to return to this after so many years. Very different experience now. The first time it blew my mind wide open.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book critiques several approaches in contemporary theory I was more or less unfamiliar with -- new materialism, hybridism, and post-humanism, arguing that their misunderstandings of nature and society stand in the way of our need to think clearly about climate change. My unfamiliarity was in no way a problem. Hybridism, et al., are introduced and discussed clearly and succinctly, as well as criticized forcefully and convincingly.

I gained a better understanding of some moments in contemporary theory I was more familiar with. For example, I had read Frederick Jameson's idea that we live in a postmodern moment in which categories of space dominate categories of time in our experience, but hadn't known what to make of it. Malm spells the idea out in terms of what he calls "the eradication of nature". That is, while former generations could travel from the city to the country and feel like they were in a different time, where older ways of life still held sway, now, nature is blotted out by the suburbs, the urban is everywhere. Malm's criticism is that in the era of climate change, a planet increasingly warmed by the history of extractive fossil fuels, nature comes roaring back into the present to threaten us with disaster. Instead of space, time is now of the essence.

Malm's approach is unapologetically Marxist. The capitalist mode of production, with it's reliance on carbon intensive fossil fuels, has brought about a warming planet, though that was not foreseen by the earliest champions of coal. Given his approach, I was fascinated to read how he argues against his targets by means of ideas adapted from contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, particularly property dualism. I hadn't expected that alliance of approaches.

I am looking forward to reading Fossil Capital, Malm's account of how capitalism unexpectedly contributed to a warming planet by switching from water power to coal. I'm also looking forward to following up on other interesting leads, such as Carolyn Merchant's work in the history of science, and Joseph Conrad's Victory, a novel which Malm says prefigures to us what victory would look like in our struggle to deal with climate change.

[Jesco Lippke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Progress of This Storm by Andreas Malm is a bold, polemical, and deeply committed intervention into contemporary climate theory. I’m still in the process of reading it, but so far, it’s been a compelling (if uneven) read.

Malm's central aim is to reassert the relevance of historical materialism against postmodern and constructivist theories that downplay the materiality of nature. He critiques many theoretical currents — from social constructivism to Latourian hybridism — often with biting wit and philosophical rigor.

That said, Malm’s style can be frustrating. He sometimes reduces complex positions to strawmen, dismisses competing theories too quickly, and indulges in a level of pedantry that borders on counterproductive. Still, when he’s right, he’s very right — especially in his insistence on keeping the distinction between society and nature clear for analytical purposes.

This book is strongest when it critiques the limits of existing theory and when it builds a case for a materialist, dialectical framework suited to the challenges of climate change. Whether or not one agrees with every point, The Progress of This Storm is an intellectually invigorating read that deserves serious engagement.

Further thoughts to follow as I continue reading.

[Reka Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is extremely philosophical so if you want to read something more scientific or sociological I would not recommend it. Also, Malm was taking his sweet time overanalyzing other authors, especially Latour, not hiding his sentiments towards Latour's theories, that was quite a straining part and made me put the book away for a long time.

Also it appears Malm is one of these authors that writes difficult on purpose including the use of unnecessarily complicated words. However, some interesting ideas were found inside, so if this all does not keep you away feel free to dive in.
Keep a dictionary close when you read this book!

[Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biggest burial of some of some of the worst (and frankly still thriving) trends within the humanities and social sciences. Malm writes with acid: he draws the lines clearly, attacks with rigour, and constructs an overwhelmingly convincing argument. I appreciate an academic work that isn't afraid to get its hands dirty, especially considering how high the stakes are when we're talking about global warming.

[The Coat · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF
I've avoided all books by Malm because I could just feel that I would hate them. they always seem like they're gonna be sensationalist, banking on making a splash but ultimately containing very unintelligent arguments. I don't have time (life force) to read books that teach me nothing.

I followed a citation in a book I was hate reading to this book, which is literally the antithesis of my Spinozist communist heart. no, we are not different than nature. and if you're gonna argue we are, you could do better than quoting at length some dumb analytic philosophers. smdh.

[Floris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Put simply, this is a polemic against theories of nature and society that are increasingly if not already mainstream in university lecture halls. Andreas Malm targets different strands of postmodernism and posthumanism, tearing into some of the most popular names in modern-day sociological, ecocritical, historical, etc. theory. He argues that the theories which are dominant today are not helpful for the contemporary climate movement. The antidote, according to Malm, is a return to a more traditional, Marxist theory of nature and society, defined through the relationship between nature and labour. This would allow for a more coherent basis for political action. His productive arguments, however, are not the book’s strongest suit. In fact, I found his agreements with scholars far less memorable than his disagreements. I’d therefore recommend this book to those who consider themselves proponents of the theories he attacks (the (socio-natural) constructivists, new materialists, and so forth), because you’d find in Malm a valuable foil. Being somewhat familiar with these theories will also help you spot instances where he is maybe indulging a bit too much in stereotypes and prejudice. Below you’ll find a speedy summary.

Chapter 1 pits the natural constructivists against Malm the natural realist. Amongst the former you’d find Bill McKibben The End of Nature and Steven Vogel Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory, who argue that “nature” itself is, in a sense, no longer “nature” (it is dead, ended, irreversibly transformed). There are of course different kinds of constructivists: idealists that consider nature as a concept, and literalists that literally see nature as constructed and built by humans. Malm finds the latter laughable. “Ten herders can draw very different portraits of the same goat, but that does not mean that the goat is a painting”. Similarly, we humans “cannot say what the storm [of climate change] is like without deploying language, but that does not mean that the storm is a linguistic entity or consists of speech acts” (28). For Malm, and likely most other people, nature existed before humans, and has by no means “died” (yet). What humans do with nature, however, is another story.

In Chapter 2 Malm begins his tirade against nature-society hybridism – the idea that because natural and social phenomena have become compound-phenomena, they cannot be differentiated from one another anymore (unless by some sort of intellectual violence). Hybridists, Malm claims, are defined by two assumptions, which he calls ontological and methodological hybridism. The ontology (or, knowledge of how things are) of hybridism states that because they are so intertwined, nature and society do not exist separately from one another. The methodology (or, methods of understanding things) which arises from this ontology therefore implies that because they are so intertwined, there is no point in differentiating society from nature (43). The poster boy of this kind of thinking, and member of the top-10 most-cited authors in the humanities and social sciences, is Bruno Latour. Latour is a favourite subject of critique for Malm, and appears frequently throughout the book. Malm warns us that the danger of hybridism lies in its inability to make meaningful statements about reality. I LOVE the examples he uses here to give an idea of the limitations of hybridism (the colour of Donald Trump’s thoughts; the experience of being at a Run the Jewels concert after a white man has been acquitted of killing a black man), even though they're unnecessary at this point and a quite self-indulgent. In arguing against conflating nature and society, Malm ultimately advocates for keeping them separate. He agrees with Alf Hornborg (another prominent polemicist) that only by keeping nature and society as distinct entities can we understand how they intermingle. Keeping them separate will still allow us to distinguish between things humans/societies have constructed, and things that are generated by natural forces.



Chap 3 introduces a new kind of hybridism, “new materialism”, as well as other “post-human” theoretical turns since the 1970s. New materialists (generally) hold that human agency cannot be separated from the environments in which that agency emerges (83). Not only humans, but also the objects and technologies around them have the capacity for “acting” with agency. These kinds of ideas also lead to alternative “-cenes”, like the “Carbocene” or the “Anthrakacene” that historian Timothy LeCain advocates for, which refer to the agency of non-human materials like carbon or coal which shape our modern world (91). Malm considers these theories as variations on a pathetic fallacy (giving human feelings to something non-human), and urges us to see humans as special. They alone are responsible for the climate crisis. They alone can wipe out all other animals simply by means of the energy the former chooses to use. “A pacemaker carries scant weight against that reality” - you simply can't make them equal with animals and the environment (97). Here I believe he’s making a bit too much of a strawman for his arguments – I don’t think anyone will think of a pacemaker or any other type of mundane objects as a destroyer of life purely by virtue of its “agency”. In trying to maintain the human-nonhuman binary he believes is at risk, Malm fails to consider that different objects, technologies, or environments have different ways of affecting mankind. Would love to have seen a more nuanced acknowledgement of this. But alas, he finishes with a pretty funny and commendably straightforward quip: "Less of Latour, more of Lenin: that is what the warming condition calls for" (98)

Chap 4 serves as Malm’s defence of climate (or scientific) realism (using, again, Latour and his Actor-Network-Theory as a foil). Scientific realism ultimately comes down to the belief that nature and the universe will run its course regardless of how it is interpreted (or socially constructed). Though he credits Latour for his search of understanding science in a warming world, he immediately discredits him for the ammunition his theory has given climate denialists (whether this argument still holds water is up for debate). He is, however, in favour of Latour's insistence that human relations can be and are mediated through matter (like technology). Even though this is a slight reinvention of the wheel, given that Marx & Engels' Capital talks of human relations embodied in things as well (pastures, steam-engines, coats, etc). Ultimately, the point of criticising Latour and other hybridists (constructivists, new materialists) is to show that these theories don't help us study the social dynamics of a warming world. If constructionists collapse nature into society, new materialists do the opposite (121). Neither, according to Malm, provides a useful foundation for taking (climate) action. He criticises several ideals for the future of climate activism which stem from these newer theories, such as the Democratic Anthropocene concept (based on idea that no democracy has ever endured a famine, and we are all co-authors of the world around us. Malm ridicules this position. no flood or typhoon is going to care if a society is democratic or not. Here I kind of feel that Malm might be missing a point, or at least making some form of false equivalence, because DA would be a principle for guiding society towards a future where more is being done to mitigate warming and therefore is a step towards combat those floods and typhoons, not a solution in itself.


Chap 5 is where Malm wants to provide a stronger theoretical basis for ecological militancy, arguably the aim of his book. The answer lies in historical materialism. He is very much in favour of Marx's realist, anti-purist view of nature, namely that all nature is earth + labour. Labour is the “pivot of material flows” (128). You can see this most clearly in capitalist systems. The causes of climate change are top-down (i.e. nature itself didn't make CO2 levels increase), and capital is to blame for those changes. Humans are to blame in so far as they are the only species cable of the capitalist mode of production (referring back to his humans-are-special argument). He notes that “every productive force, nay every human artefact can be seen as a combination of the social and the natural" (135). NOT a hybrid, mind you, because it has the all the negative connotations he just listed, but a combination (a Marxist term), which is more uneven and dynamic, suggesting contradicting forces at work. Capital creates this imbalance between nature and society wherever its power extends. Nature-society combinations, therefore, are the way forward.

Chap 6 further develops this combination-perspective by arguing that polarisation between nature and society (keeping them at opposite ends of a spectrum) is a good thing. He defends this by supporting a Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems, termed “metabolic rift theory” - a very cool name for a pretty familiar academic idea. It can be summed up very crudely like this: “Nature consists of biophysical processes and cycles. So does society: human bodies must engage in metabolic exchanges with nonhuman nature. That need not be particularly harmful to any of the parties”. Over the course of history, however, these exchanges have become “fractured and forcibly rearranged”, causing harm not only to those (humans and nonhumans) disadvantaged by this change but also disturbing those natural biophysical processes and cycles. This is the rift that has opened up (142). Great. How does this fit with the rest of his argument? Well, in theories based on hybridism, all binaries are collapsed into a unity (he refers to this is called dissolutionism). When academics write books and articles in a dissolutionist manner, what you end up with is “an orgy in the mud”: fluffy prose which doesn’t say anything and – importantly – fuels an “emperor’s-new-clothes syndrome” in academia and beyond, when people don’t want to admit they don’t understand (Malm cites Ellen Hertz’s “refreshing outburst” here) (150-151). Having very recently experienced how frustrating this can be in the context of a group discussion, I wholeheartedly agree with this observation. Malm instead suggest that we need more radical binaries, so that inequalities in climate change can be addressed (e.g. a more radical rich-poor divide to show how much more the rich are contributing to CO2 emissions than the poor, to put it bluntly). Continuing with permanent “in-hyphenation” (insisting on talking about “nature-in-society”, “capital-in-nature”, etc. as a means of communicating how everything is unified), as proposed by historian Jason Moore, would get cumbersome and not get us anywhere. He blames Moore for blunting the radical climate movement’s key argument: “you did this to enrich yourself, not we are dying because of it”. What he wants is for this kind of feeling to be mobilised into an “ecological class hatred” (157). It’s a position I can understand but don’t feel comfortable with myself – surely theory may also allow us to work cooperatively? I don’t think Malm would share this view. Rich, predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly western populations benefit from and sustain their lifestyles on the current exploitation and destruction of the Earth. Climate science is an existential threat to them. And so there is no other option than confrontation. Malm gives us the choice of being militants or apathetic bystanders – there is no alternative in his world of radical binaries.

The conclusion is very choppy and feels a bit like Malm’s train of thought has run out of steam. No worries, by this point you’d have probably guessed what his main takeaways are. As I said, I recommend this book to people who are already slightly familiar, and ideally consider themselves proponents of, the theories attacked by Malm. Hopefully this book can prompt such people to question what it is they find valuable about such theories, and to what extent they are needed in both an academic and a political sense. I generally prefer arguments that take clear and bold positions in academia (see the fluff section above), and in that sense Malm has provided an excellent (if flawed) contribution to our ways of thinking about nature and society.

[Sammi Dé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spent most of the book debunking constructionism and new materialism. Interesting at some points but a lot of it was boring inconsequential semantics (Malm even admitted this himself at the end: ‘As for theory, it can only ever play a very limited part in such a project. But at least it should not be a drag on it’.)

- The lines of reasoning came across as arrogant- to an extent that it was no longer useful to read (excessive use of farfetched oversimplifying analogies); while I understand how ridiculous theorists like Latour come across, I don’t think they should be dealt with like children
- I enjoyed the nature theory talk; many conceptions I held regarding nature-society hybridism; Cartesian dualism; and nature-as-fiction were successfully brought into question, through clear explanations of the potentially damaging material implications of each idea. (aka we must continue to see nature and society as separates (or as embedded society-within-nature), continue to emphasise the unique reality of human agency; all this does not suggest any innate species-wide superiority but simply represents a material reality of historicised nature)
- Climate denialism talk was (though out of place) interesting enough but nothing new
- His conclusions are suitably radical
- chapters on Marxist theory felt out of place
- Overall quite a fragmented structure (perhaps an ode to the cover) and largely intra-academic

[Leo Van Doofy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moi même je prends beaucoup de plaisir a utiliser les concepts -ou anticoncepts- de Latour, ils sont rassurants. Rassurants parce qu'il donne une place équivalente a tous les actants dans la longue chaîne de événements réels. Mais j'aime encore plus me sentir concerné. J'aime sentir la colère monter quand je suis face à une injustice mondiale (écologique), et comme le démontre brillamment Malm, c'est justement parce qu'on dispose de concepts et de catégorie qu'on peut identifier les sources des problèmes et nos marges d'actions, si désespérées soient elles.
Un livre d'une importance capitale, qui évite l'écueil classique de la critique conservatrice du post modernisme et replace l'écologie radicale dans son cadre conceptuel.

[Chup · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little harsh and I'm not in total agreement with some of Malm's broad-brush critiques, but I NEEDED this after my env humanities masters. Really gave me some vindication, relief, and a reality check. But, I'm not sure if it would be relevant/interesting at all for anyone not steeped in environmental humanities academia. It's an antidote for a sickness that most people thankfully are never exposed to.

[Nathan Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hell of a diss track.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read book. Undoubtedly the best book on understanding the ecology today.

It is primarily a truly devastating obliteration of postmodernist theory, ruthlessly dissecting it's fallacies, stupidities, logical inconsistencies and absurd tricks. In particular, Malm demolishes the current philosophical fetish for "erasing binaries". He exposes how nonsensical this attempt to dissolve fairly normal and analytically useful binaries is, with particular scorn to the supposed "dissolution" between nature and society.

Supposedly, according to types who espouse this crap, it's because climate change has dissolved the boundary where man's actions end and the natural response begins, thus showing the complete merging of the two. The binary encourages the domination of society over nature, and thus, all of woes today. Although politically admirable, Malm shows this is simply analytical nonsense. Through penetrating and forensic line-by-line analysis, Malm shows that the attempt to remove the boundary between society and nature is both analytical drivel, and also politically disastrous. Descartes has become the propped up philosophical piñata from which the postmodernist children have beaten with their sticks. All because he introduced a stark (and indeed, wrong) binary between body and mind, which supposedly down the line introduced the notion of society dominating nature, and thus leading to all our woes.

How then, do we approach the nature of Cartesian binaries? Malm provides an awe-inspiring new foundation from which to base our approach to the mind-body problem, not just ecological theory. It’s probably best approach to body-mind problem you'll ever read. Essentially, it's that the mind (whatever that is), is clearly part of the body, it doesn't float above the mortal frame like an angel. The language used by folks like Descartes was itself contractionary, attempting to separate it from its materialism, revealed in the language of the mind "impacting" the body. How can it impact something physical unless it itself has a physicality? In which case it's hardly non-corporeal is it? The silly mysticism in this approach is obviously false. But this is itself a problem, because patently an abstract thought (Malm cites an example of say, imagining what Daenerys Targaryen from GoT will do next), cannot be reduced to simple imput-output relays from sensory experience. 1) Daenerys Targaryen in fiction, 2) we are imagining the character (her as an actual person, not just Emilia Clarke as her on the telly) doing things not in the show or books, thus creating completely new scenarios. Where did those come from? Obviously not from sensory experiences. So it's a problem. Where the hell do thoughts come from? Well, Malm concludes, based on the work of authors of Jacquette in the substance monist property dualism approach, that:

"begins with the recognition that the brain is the seat of all mental occurrences. The latter must come to an absolute, impassable end when the former ceases to be. But this suggests that the physical entity of the brain, and the human body as a whole, is a bearer of mental properties, which cannot themselves be reduced to sheer materiality or equated with physical components. They are lodged in the body and inextricable from it: hence they belong to the exact same substance. They are non-physical properties for the body, the sum of which makes up the mind." (p.55)

So although the mind is clearly a part of the body, it is still compatible with it being above the body. Both apart, and yet also clearly higher than the rest. Stupid? No, Malm cites the heart. Patently, it is a part of the body, and yet obviously it possibly the most important bit to the functioning of the rest. It is a part, yet above. This approach blew my brain, and totally revolutionised my thinking on the thorny subject. Malm uses this broader approach, as discussed above, on the entire natural world. It is a breath-taking tour-de-force in philosophy and explanation, and is the clearest and most amazing explanation of it I’ve read.

Applying this approach to the natural world, Malm then proceeds to senselessly tear to shreds the vast avalanche of obscuration prattle that has arisen precisely based on supposed falsity of the binary (ranging from Latorian constructivism, Timothy Morton’s crazed ‘New Materialism’, Post-humanist thinkers ala Donna Harkaway, the shallow pseudo-Marxism of Jason Moore, and many, many others). In their attempt to destroy even our capacity to refer to things as independent, and thus understand their interactions, (“one wonders if any other guild has engaged in so much vandalism against its own tools as academics”, he brilliantly puts in ft21 on pg.186) they drive one into an intellectual dead end every time.

In his systematic demolishment of several philosophers' entire careers, Malm exposes the laughable nature of such theories. Some proclaim human agency no longer exists, interacting so much with nature that one cannot consider the former by accounting of the agency of the other (this is Timothy Morton’s approach) others get stuck into a mire of constructivist lunacy, stating that science is a ‘social construct’, making an independent and verifiable scientific objectivity impossible (Latour’s approach) and thus driving him into a denialist ditch. The former is laughable, as by attempting to abolish the supposed “anthropocentrism” inherent in our thinking, we are by definition obscuring the, well, you know, anthropocentric causes of climate change, and thus the entire line of fossil burning that has caused it.

Malm goes on to provide the best explanation of dialectics you'll ever read. What Malm shows is that the presumption that nature has "mixed" with humanity does not mean it has somehow been obliterated. On the contrary,

“ecological crises render the distinction between the social and the natural more essential than ever....This, as Alf Hornborg has recently argued, is the truly vital theoretical task: to maintain the analytical distinction so as to tease out how the properties of society intermingle with those of nature” (p.61).

Malm used the example of tea, for example. In tea, water, the tea bag, milk and sugar are poured in. Would we then say the sugar has been "dissolved" by the water, that it no longer exists, that it has ceased to exist as a separate quantity? Or would we, obviously, say it now interacts with the tea, floating on top, not absorbed completely? This is our perspective on nature, as he explanatory chapter of dialectics is majestic. The point is, mankind is a contradictionary creature in that despite clearly being part of nature we are, none the less, clearly capable of standing outside and indeed above it. It is precisely this dominant precision that gives us both the capacity to cause it such harm and indeed manage to actually stop the damage it is causing. The fact that man impacts on nature is what we need to analysis, not the presumption that the impact between two different things represents the passive absorption.

Malm cites, in proof of precisely the dynamic dialectical nature of the interaction of nature and society, and its practical uses for out struggles, the example of aerosols dissolving the ozone layer, the only reason that problem was stopped, is precisely because of separating the societal cause (aerosols) from nature (the ozone layer) and then acting according through legislation. The harsh binary between society and nature then is not just then logically true, but in fact, desirable, in order for us to get a greater understanding of the warming condition and fight it

He draws upon heavily from the brilliant work of people like John Bellamy Foster and the work he did drawing out Marx's ecological writings, and anyone serious about ecology must check him out, and the wider literature of it. In its metabolic rift theory it states clearly that ‘ecological concerns are not problems derived internally, originating from ecosystems themselves, but are produced externally, by social drivers.” This tragedy is possible, however, only because “human society exists within the earthly metabolism”. Thus, a statement by someone like Jason Moore that says “Capitalism makes nature. Nature makes capitalism” is false, as in fact “It is the utter disharmony between the two that needs to be accounted for, and it is that which the theory of the metabolic rift has so consistently foregrounded.” (p.182). In fact the currently very (undeservedly) fashionable Jason Moore also gets hammered for his frankly ludicrous statements. See John Bellamy Foster’s great destruction of Moore on this point.

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2016...

Bruno Latour comes in for particular abuse, and honestly, anyone citing him ever again in any way positive should be laughed out of the conversation. To my mind, he was already an intellectual joke for his absurd claim that Egyptian pharaohs could not have died of tuberculosis for the fact it was only identified as a diseased in the 19th century (repeated in this book, and it's no less stupid again), but this book should utterly hammer the nails onto his coffin forever. His patent nonsense is effortlessly destroyed (and quite honestly, some of the things he writes is stunning. Here’s a small smattering of this charlatan’s believes:

“We have to abandon beliefs…in the existence of logic, in the power of reason, even in belief itself and in its distinction from knowledge”
“There is no such thing as superior knowledge and inferior knowledge”
“’Science’ is much too ramshackle to talk about. We must speak instead of the allies which certain networks use to make themselves stronger than others”.
“No set of sentences is by itself consentient of inconsistent; all that we need to know is who tests it with which allies and for how long”.

These are real quotes from the man. Malm goes on to dismantle him, and his form of “epistemological nihilism” which “boils down to a rather vulgar types of Machiavellianism or Nietzscheism: what is right is solely a question of right” (p.122), truth having been banished to the wilderness.

Malm brings into the field the brilliant work of the almost completely ignored and extremely intelligent Roy Bhaskar is his approach for science, his "critical realist" framework he developed. It’s based on the notion that “In the terminology of climate realism, the ‘intransitive dimension’ – climate change – is independent of ‘the transitive dimension’ – the science about it- or, in short, the storm is coming whether the barometer is there or not”. (pg. 128). The goal of radicals is to respect the science, while using our analytical tools around us to process it. This is opposed to the post-modernists, especially Latour, who managed to make careers engaging in what Bhaskar called the “epistemic fallacy”, in which the epistemological models used to understand reality was conflated with the ontological truth it was studying, supposing the former tainted the latter and rendered it useless. Hint, it doesn't, and as anyone can testify, a scientific experiment can be done in a school classroom as much as a government lab (on basic level things), precisely because the knowledge produced is separate and independent to its social surroundings.

As Malm writes In fact, any self-respecting leftist would have to believe such things, lest we'd be right back into potentially indulging in ideas like "Jewish physics" due to the strong Jewish orientated backgrounds of most of the founders of modern physics (Chomksy made this point a while back when dealing with the truth-deniers post-modernist monkeys himself) or supporting Lysenkoism due to its opposition to "capitalist Darwinism". We know where the post-modern attempt to "politicise science" go - hint, hint, it's bad (this point was made by Andrew Greenberg, someone reasonably sympathetic to these kind of critique’s as well, pointing out the danger of this approach). Postmodernism’s tilting at this windmill was always deranged (Foucault’s disciple Agamben has become a full lunatic, taking the ‘bio-political’ hatred of institutional authority to the level he is now a COVID denialist. Such is the way the postmodernist’s ends up, on the wrong side of the reality they most of the time don’t seem to believe exists in the first place). But in the warming condition, it’s especially insane.

“In his already classic rebuttal of such (post-modernist) histography, In Defence of History, Richard J. Evans deploys Auschwitz deploys Auschwitz as an overwhelming master-case…we can expect global warming to be similar used. To paraphrase Evans, global warming is not a text. The excessive temperatures are not a piece of rhetoric…And if it is true of global warming, then it must be true at least to some degree of other past happenings, events, institutions, people as well.” (p.22)

In what may be my favourite quote from the whole book, and one that should be nailed to the literature departments of every cultural studies, literature, humanities departments across the universes:

“In the high postmodernist era, critics of natural science liked to assert that it was oppressive, conservative, tied up and tasked with reproducing the established order. Today, ‘science is not the enemy; suppression of science – by Exxon for example – is the enemy’, with Hamilton, Surviving the warming condition requires full alignment with cutting-edge science. If some of it had served to legitimise the ruling classes, one branch has now delivered perhaps the most damming indictment ever to their rule: it is putting the material foundations for human civilisation in peril. It should therefore come as no surprise that this particular science is the object of so mooch denial in so many different forms, visceral and comatose, woolgathering and venomous” (p.132)

One must check out Mam’s article here on historical writing, a marvellous defence of the gran narrative and its need in radical theory, and a blistering refutation of those who believe the best history can do is muddle around in the dirt amongst our own confused footprints, never discovering anything of truth or worth:

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3438...

Climate science realism with dialectical Marxism is the way forward, post-modernist constructivist lunacy must be put into the garbage heap (as, indeed, I think it is already happening).
There are too many amazing quotes for me to sight here, practically every line is a dazzling spark of genius and insight. The entire book is a masterpiece from start to end, the most beautifully written, analytically rigorous work about ecological thought to come out to date. With a range that is breath-taking, and a bite to the fools and frauds he ruthlessly dissects, it is a must read. BUY IT NOW.

[Kriegslok · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If it is social, then it has arisen through relations between humans as they have changed over time, and then it can also, in principle, be dismantled by their actions; if it is natural, it is not a humanly created product but rather a set of forces and causal powers independent of their agency, and hence it cannot be so disassembled"
Unlike his monumental 'Fossil Capital' 'The Progress of this Storm is quite a slim volume. It is a work concerned with some of the theorisation of Climate Change, especially those trains of thought which cloud, confuse or even give succour to denialism. Not surprisingly it is in the ivory tower world of the Postmodernist school that much of the book finds problematic and down right schizophrenic in its theorising on the natural and social world (although the very existence of either seems to be a serious conceptual challenge for some of the authors reviewed here). In this world binary class based conflict has been diluted down, and confused in a world of theorising smoke and mirrors, a multitude of cause, effects, or a complete lack of any, are offered in place of hard-nosed economic analysis. Malm does a comprehensive demolition job on those trying to give conscious agency to the inanimate and those who attempt to argue that there is no such thing as society or nature in a manner that would probably even have embarrassed even Thatcher. The clear warning here is that there is no shortage of theorists around, however, many of them are demonstrably wrong and some of them, in pursuing the lines of thought that they do, do nothing to challenge the impending existential crisis facing the social and great chunks of the natural world but actually compound the problem.
The book not only challenges the Postmodernist cloud-cuckooland but looks at philosophical approaches to understanding key concepts such as nature and society, and their points of connection and negation. "Far from abolishing it" says Malm "ecological crises render the distinction between the social and the natural more essential than ever". The book is good in reminding the reader of the importance of how the world around us is understood and conceptualised, in reminding us of how we are both of, and separate from, the natural world, and those aspects of our character as humans which make us different to other animate life and how this threatens directly our own continued existence and threatens that of much of what other animate and inanimate matter shares this lump of rock in this boundless Universe with us. In our reality "... independent nature is the only thing that cannot come to an end". While it is undoubtedly important to study how we conceptualise and explain the world around us and the power of language and the imagination these need to be grounded in some macro reality to vbe useful.
For humans, Malm convincingly argues, "action remains owned by the instigator irrespective of whether outcomes were foreseen or intended / unintended", in the case of climate change it is possible to trace the causes to a historical and ongoing "collective endeavour", with "the primitive accumulation of fossil capital" the catalyst to the growth of capitalism and the transition to a neoliberal world system. In this, climate denial itself has become a prime example of "collective agent" activities. It is this clear picture of agency that Malm shows many theorists struggle to reject in their pursuit of "academic narcissism". In rebutting these he quotes Clive Hamilton on posthumanism which he says "repudiates our uniqueness as world-makers just at the time our world transforming power reaches its zenith... Only in the last two or three decades has the pre-eminence of human agency truly confronted us. No other force, living or dead, is capable of influencing the Earth System and has the capacity to decide to do otherwise. Now that is agency; and it is what makes humans the freaks of nature".
In conclusion Malm calls for "political warfare against an ever more pestiferous ruling class" with the job of critical scholars to "strive towards more radical binary polarisation" with "manuals brimful with binaries" to resist a peaceful walk into the abyss.

This is an interesting short and to the point book covering an issue which has been forgotten, or at least not addressed directly and urgently before. Like all of Andreas Malms work it is a valuable contribution to the armoury of that tiny force of those looking for the fulcrum where they can turn the tables on the system currently driving us into the furnace.

Engels "Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each conquest takes its revenge on us. Each of them, it is true, has in the first place the consequences on which we counted, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforseen effects which only too often cancel out the first"

[Subvert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I became a fan of Andreas Malm after reading his excellent Fossil Capital, that in my opinion is one of the most important books in recent years. So I picked up this book when I first saw it. The Progress of This Storm is more focused on theory, criticizing all sorts of philosophical schools, and its practical use for me is more difficult to pin down. I like a bit of theory, but I have no idea what to think of the new materialism etc. And there's always the 'what's the point' question. Now in the introduction Malm does write the following that I quite liked:

"Now, theory does not seem like the most exigent bussiness in a rapidly warming world. There is that itching feeling that the only meaningful thing to do now is to let go of everything else and physically cut off fossil fuel combustion, deflate the tyres, block the runways, lay siege to the platforms, invade the mines. [..] All has already been said; now is the time for confrontation. This essay presents no arguments for restraining such impulses."

But

"Theory can be part of the problem. If everything is up for re-evaluation in a warming world, this must apply to it as well: theory too is called to account, required to demonstrate its relevance and declare its contributions, even if some of its producers and consumers would never consider joining direct action against fossil fuels."

Fair enough!

Most of the book is an attack on postmodernism (constructivism, hybridism, new materialism, posthumanism) and while it seems quite convincing to me and rather damning on Bruno Latour et al, I can't really judge it. Perhaps he's making straw men sometimes, I have no idea, I have not read any of these authors. It was entertaining or short enough to get through for me.

Malm writes very concise about complicated topics in a rather accessible way. I think that didn't spend much time in academia can read both this and Fossil Capital. Just like Fossil Capital it's also quite funny at times, with witty references and small jokes. But what I really like is the anger. I wish more people in academia would write with this sense of urgency. And I really appreciate it when people that take up intellectually leading roles in our societies (because of their brains and/or academic position/status) also use those positions to speak out and support those that do take radical action. I'm reminded of Wolfgang Streeck that ends his relatively dry sociological analysis of the eurocrisis that now is the time for not just words, but bricks. Widely respected old grey-haired white men saying such things gives legitimacy (and therefore more safety) to the militants that take quite serious risks when they do direct action. Malm is of course considerably younger and more part of 'the movement', as he does participate in Ende Gelände and recently Code Rood.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having previously read How to Blow Up a Pipeline and been distinctly unimpressed I picked this book up with some trepidation, it having been recommended by someone I trust. It was like reading a different author, where in How to Blow Up a Pipeline Malm offers sloppy logic and historically poorly informed arguments, in The Progress of This Storm his arguments are thought-provoking and interesting, even if I don't always agree.

His core argument is that nature and society are two separate things. He argues against social constructivists who collapse the two categories together and argues instead the interplay between the two is where productive theory and research can be done. In setting this argument up he has Bruno Latour and Noel Castree in his sights. Having not read eithers work on the topic I can't speak to how well he represents their positions, but Malm's position seems like a well reasoned materialism to me against the much less grounded constructivism he quotes.

At times Malm overplays the supposed genius and relevance of Marxism. Admittedly, he does this in the context of the discussion between materialism and constructivism. But I think at times this seeps into a broader constructivism is wrong, and Marxism got it right so therefore Marxism should be the lens we view the world through. I take a more cautious view of Marxism, largely because of how dogmatic Marxists often are, but it's a matter of taste I guess.

I would recommend this book. It is heavily conceptual but raises interesting questions and ideas that are worth paying attention to.

[Ayelen Arostegui · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capitalism considers nature as a dead, inert object to be manipulated and controlled with maximum efficiency, its goal to make natural resources (food, labour, energy and raw materials) as cheap as possible in order for profits to be higher and higher. This mindset, based and fueled by the fossil fuel extraction, has taken us to the point where the biosphere -aka, our medium of existence- might cease to be suitable -that's the outcome of a warming planet-. We have accepted those destructive forces to be called productive and we still consider that capitalist demands of infinite growth are worthy. Well, we can keep with that kind of dynamics and eat the chaos of +2 degrees warming or perhaps, we could start thinking of nature as something else than a commodity. That would mean living with the autonomous sun and wind and waves without any more solid energy to expand on. It is a new humility that our habits of owning the earth seem not quite able to stomach but it is also our only way out. In the end, ecological militancy is a demand for a shift in power relations between humanity and the natural world.

[nick]

A bracing polemic against theory that has retreated into a matter-oriented infinite regress that makes political thinking hard, if not impossible, to do. Naturally, some nuance gets banished, but Malm knows this—his point is that this is no time for arcana that require a lifetime of study to get straight. I’m not sure how meaningful this would be to anyone who doesn’t inhabit a world where Latour is a big name, but as someone who has occasionally tried to make this type of theory do political stuff, it gives voice to many of my doubts and frustrations.

The one really regrettable loss to me is that he gives posthuman/nonhuman theory short shrift (e.g. he totally misses recent Haraway while critiquing her older positions)—understanding multispecies issues will be vital to coping with the biotic toll of the “storm,” and provides further grounds for critique, even if it comes with its own tricky paradoxes.

I agree with others that the last few chapters (the “Autonomy” one in particular) deserve a broader readership than the rest of the book.

[Ryder · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Progress of This Storm is another good book about ecological philosophy and adapting to climate change, but I personally felt that Malm came across as too pretentious. His ideas are original and fascinating but many paragraphs require additional readings to make sense of the point, which is often rather simple in the end. If you can get past his prose and spend some extra time studying his ideas then you’ll find some great content.

“Society having touched off climate change, nature does the rest of the work. In the art of building, the equivalent scenario would be something like turning one screw into one plank and then, as though on signal, watching all the bricks and the beams and the concrete steel and window panes come rushing to the site and spontaneously assemble in the shape of, say, a shopping mall: a magical event, meaning that construction does not happen like that. Global warming is not built but triggered. The climate is not created but changed, unhinged, disrupted, destabilized.”