El capitalismo en la trama de la vida: ecología y acumulación de capital

by Jason W. Moore

Finanzas, trabajo, clima, alimentos. ¿De que modo están conectadas las crisis del siglo XXI? En El capitalismo en la trama de la vida, Jason W. Moore sostiene que las fuentes de la actual turbulencia global tienen una causa común: el agotamiento del capitalismo como forma de organizar la naturaleza, incluida la naturaleza humana. A partir de los grandes análisis del capitalismo histórico de Braudel a Wallerstein y Arrighi, de las recientes aportaciones de la economía política ecologista y de determinadas lecturas del feminismo, Moore nos ofrece una síntesis innovadora: el capitalismo supone un determinado tipo de «ecología mundial» que implica formas de producción y distribución de la riqueza, sistemas de poder y ecosistemas hechos tanto de naturalezas humanas como extrahumanas.

Bajo esta perspectiva, la mayor fuerza histórica del capitalismo ?así como la fuente de sus principales problemas? ha resultado de su capacidad para crear «naturalezas baratas», en forma de mano de obra, alimentos, energía y materias primas por las que ha pagado poco o nada. Esta capacidad es lo que ahora se ha vuelto problemático. Al repensar el capitalismo a través de una vibrante dialéctica de la «humanidad en la naturaleza», Moore transporta a los lectores en un viaje teórico desde el ascenso del capitalismo histórico hasta el caleidoscopio de las múltiples capas de la crisis actual. Este libro muestra cómo la crítica del «capitalismo en la naturaleza» ?en lugar de considerar el capitalismo y la naturaleza por separado? resulta fundamental a la hora de comprender nuestra coyuntura, así como de empujar en la dirección de la emancipación en el siglo venidero.

Genres: Nonfiction, Ecology, Economics, Environment, Politics, Philosophy, History

356 pages, Paperback

First published July 14, 2015

About the author

Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian and historical geographer at Binghamton University, where he is associate professor of sociology. He is author or editor, most recently, of Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015), Capitalocene o Antropocene? (Ombre Corte, 2017), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (PM Press, 2016), and, with Raj Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (University of California Press, 2017). His books and essays on environmental history, capitalism, and social theory have been widely recognized, including the Alice Hamilton Prize of the American Society for Environmental History (2003), the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Section on the Political Economy of the World-System (American Sociological Association, 2002 for articles, and 2015 for Web of Life), and the Byres and Bernstein Prize in Agrarian Change (2011). He is chair (2017-18) of the Political Economy of the World-System Section (ASA), and coordinates the World-Ecology Research Network.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

The web of price

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I was so disappointed! After an introduction that promised to look at how capitalism has developed in nature and nature in capitalism, both co-producing each other historically, the book muddles through as a long rant, angrily re-narrating in the post-workerist Marxist tradition (Caffentzis & Federici seem to be the main references) economic history findings that originally responded to other questions. Moore very soon abandons the “web of life" concept – which seems to come from Fritjof Capra, without much in the way of a definition – and conducts his self-assured analysis expanding on the intuition that capitalism has been thriving since 1450 thanks to the availability of “Four Cheaps”: cheap labour-power, cheap energy, cheap food and cheap raw materials (we are spared the “cheap fuck”, which does not do justice to Caffentzis & Federici though – but a lot of attention is devoted to the appropriation of reproductive labour in any case).

So we get caught in a “web of price”, with chapter after chapter dedicated to explaining how capitalism has kept its input prices low over the course of history in order to postpone its collapse. All of which is so old, and so little Marxian, to make you queasy. Appropriation of unpaid work/energy is all that matters. Which fails to distinguish capitalism from other modes of production that over history accomplished the same appropriation of unpaid resources, and fails Marx’s definition of capital as a relationship.

There's plenty of subtle and convincing remarks along the way, and the focus on the Green Revolution in the final chapter is very good. But there is nothing original to the approach, contrary to the book’s initial claims, and the “solutions” mentioned in passing are modestly based on examples of very local movements (in Detroit?).

At the end, the author concludes, the problem with capitalism in the twenty-first century might not be one of “taps” (i.e. resources) after all, as “the end of cheap garbage may loom larger than the end of cheap resources”. So what?

Probably to look at capitalism in its relationship with nature, it is science that should be explored, the “science-frontier making” complex that as Harvey suggests (but Moore rejects the suggestion) is constantly pushing the frontiers capitalism needs to work as an open system farther and farther, inside our bodies, physical matter, cyber space, and what have you.

[Rhys · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, the message of the book is okay, but ...

The introduction was a muddle. I've read other books by Jason W. Moore which were fine, but in this one there seems to be a lot of hyperventilation. The impression I got was that the author was trying to be original or make a new contribution to the literature of ecology/socialism - which is fine. But it seemed that a lot of the discussions went like this: "A line of thought [Marxism, Red-Greens, Environmentalists, etc.] is mistaken ... Of course, they are not completely wrong ... And I will apply another name for the same thing to make it correct."

And speaking of Marxism, Moore seems to want to anchor his thesis on Marx's critique of capital but kind of butchers the traditional concepts and then heads out on his own path which, charitably, has little to do with Marx's critique. One example, "In this, a twentieth century auto plant would embody relative surplus value (rising labor productivity per hour) ..." (p.15), which is not correct. There are many on-the-fly statements like this that made me squirm. To be fair, trying to fit his Cheap Natures and 'productivity/plunder' component into Marxist concepts of exploitation and the value composition of capital was interesting at times.

And, finally, Moore spilled a lot of ink trying to move the emergence of capitalism back to the 'long 16th Century'. He was relentless, breathless ... but I never understood why this was so important to him. I am more aligned with Gramsci's "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born" perspective regarding the transition from feudalism, to mercantilism, to capitalism.

I think Moore's later books are more focused, with much of the same content.

[Eugene Kernes · Rating 2 out of 5]

The economy and the environment are usually treated as independent of one another. This creates a problem of seeing nature as an external thing that can be used as pleased, which leads to dire consequences. Rather, this book shows how capitalism organizes nature. Moore uses the term oikeios to express the relationship between species and the environment. Rather than seeing humans and nature, its humanity-in-nature. A way to internalize what is normally thought of external. Nature is not just an objects humans act upon, nor is it just what humans develop through. It is a relationship in which each impress’s upon and shapes each other. The interactions between capitalism and nature are important and needed to understanding the outcomes of capitalism-in-nature.

The way capitalism operates is to reuse low to no cost products. Or rather, to force nature to provide for humanity by working harder and at low cost. Rather than capitalism working on nature, capitalism works through nature. Trying to expand the production of surplus value. Identifying value as what the capitalist civilization deems valuable rather than what actually is valuable. A constant tangle emerges as nature reacts to the actions of humans, and humans try to obtain what they need from nature.

This book proposes an important concept and a way of thinking, but because of the way its arguments are constructed, makes the concepts feel underwhelming. Written in a convoluted manner using Marxist terminology, which the author recognizes do not have the same meaning now as they once did. Applying the same arguments to very different ways of reproducing the economy creates many misunderstandings. Although the author tries to show case the praxis, the arguments appear abstract rather than practical. There is much history of the interaction between humans and the environment, but few examples of modern-day activities. What is needed to make this book an effective transmitter of an important idea, is to make it understood to an audience of more than those who understand Marxist concepts.

[Jack Brookes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moore's argument is compelling and elegant, tieing together seemingly disparate histories to demonstrate how capitalism has reconciled it's contradictions through successive reconfigurations of world-ecology. An incredibly important contribution to the law of value, affirming how integral the appropriation of both human and non-human natures is to the accumulation of capital.

[Milanesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es el primer libro de este tipo que me leo, lo creo destacable destacar, me lo he leído para un trabajo y no tenía el nivel apropiado para leerlo. Dejando eso en claro, me ha parecido un libro muy bueno. Me ha marcado mi manera de ver el mundo, nuestra relación con la naturaleza, entre nosotros mismos. No lo veo un libro fácil y no sabría decir si es súper original o no, pero personalmente si que lo recomendaré y releeré en un futuro.

[Benjamin Eskola · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to give this a higher rating but too much of it went over my head. What I understood was interesting, but a lot of it felt quite dry and academic, with unexplained jargon — "Four Cheaps" and "Cheap" (always capitalised) was dropped in regularly, which only made sense because I was already aware of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things; "technics" was regularly used (almost always italicised) and even after going back to look it up I didn't really understand what it referred to; and there were occasional references to the "first" or "second" sixteenth or nineteenth centuries, each time having to explain in parentheses what time period was actually being referred to, making the jargon term superfluous.

What I did manage to learn from the book boils down mainly to two things: firstly, that discussions of capitalism and ecology tend to separate the environment from society, even when they pay lip service to the fact that humanity is part of nature; conversely, also, that society is inescapably shaped by nature and therefore the two cannot be meaningfully separated. Secondly was the useful (to me) insight that the role of nature within capitalism is analogous to the role of women, for example; i.e., that nature provides unpaid 'work' that capitalism depends on to continue to profit and expand, in the same way as it depends on the unpaid work of women (in particular) in order to produce new workers; in both cases the work is vital but treated as invisible/free, in ways that would have to be paid for if done 'within' capitalism.

One further point is that the book seems a little disjointed, and I wondered if it was at least partly put together from other works; the first chapters seem to dive right into the deep end conceptually, then chapter 7 (of 10) seems to reiterate a lot of the basic points (which I actually found helpful, since I'd been pretty lost in the first half of the book). That chapter, by the way, is on 'Anthropocene or Capitalocene', making an argument against a term that flattens humanity into a single indistinguished mass and posits the entire species as the problem, rather than the particular social arrangements of capitalism. It's also the title of an edited volume by Moore, and an argument that is worth investigating further, even if I don't know whether this is the best introduction to it.

All in all, you might get more from this book if you're more familiar with some of the concepts than I am; in my case I'm intending to read Seven Cheap Things soon, which I understand makes the same arguments targeted more towards a lay audience.

[Hayden Kesterson]

This book was very important for me to read. It has helped me connect a lot of what I've thought/felt about more holistic approaches to humanity and nature with the Marx and other economic and political thinkers I've read. As someone situated in a lot of food justice work and discourse, reading this book has prepared me to deal with the pervasive feel good "back to the land" type arguments I encounter there in a way that is both gracious to what they are right about and hopefully helpful to showing where they need a little bit more work.

While not as clear as a the other things by Moore that I've read, the concepts he explores here (abstract social nature, historical nature, capitalism-in-nature, his distinction between exploitation and appropriation) have helped clarify a lot for me and the sources he cites have given me a lot of roads to go down to expand my thinking. I do still need to read volume 3 of capital to fine tune my understanding much of the Marx that he's drawing from (especially the overproduction/underproduction through-line), but other reviewers that have claimed him to be inaccurate in his use of Marxist terms have either not explained themselves well enough for me to understand their claims or seem to show a type of rigidity in their thinking that is pretty funny for supposedly dialectical thinkers. All in all I think Moore shows a very useful path forward for thinking about the end of capitalism, he just should have given his manuscript a few more edits.

[Lukáš · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important book that tries to think the current ecological crisis through tools spanning from contemporary Marxist, post-Marxist (think Donna Haraway) and World-Systems sociology (Arrighi, for example), extending and capitalizing on much of what many of the significant works in these fields can offer. There are in particular some strong points when Moore is looking at the developments in agriculture and industry and extends the cyclical model of Arrighi by placing emphasis on the 'cheaps' that Capital needs for starting a new world-systemic cycle of accumulation. Also, some of the plays on the exclusion of people and nature who do the 'work' for Capital without being acknowledged for doing so are insightful, yet I still think that there is something that's a little insufficient in the way how the category of oikeios is developed here against the notions of the green arithmetic, cartesian dualism, and the web of life, even though, what is achieved with it is pretty impressive. At times, though, I think the book could have been written more freshly and often is a bit too much of a dry academic style for what it offers.

[Rohit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid theoretical analysis on the relationship between capitalism and nature - or rather (as is insisted over and over again throughout the book), the unity between capitalism and nature, and the importance of foregrounding the way capitalism is a system of organizing nature, influenced and influencing natural ecological processes.

Was a bit repetitive at the beginning - took about 100 pages for the argument/analysis to really get going - and was difficult at times to follow the more abstract/theoretical sections. Its important to have a very solid grounding of Marxism and its jargon/lingo before getting into this. Aka, this is a book for Marxists about how to think about capitalism and nature.

Best parts of the book in my opinion were later sections that got more into the empirical/historical analysis about things like the Colombian Exchange or the modern food system.

Overall an important book to get up to speed on the more advanced debates and discussions happening in Marxist ecology.

[Raffaello Palandri · Rating 4 out of 5]

oday’s Book of the Day is Capitalism in the Web of Life, written by Jason W. Moore in 2015 and published by Verso.

Jason W. Moore is a distinguished historian and environmental sociologist whose work has fundamentally reshaped contemporary understandings of capitalism and ecology. His interdisciplinary approach synthesises history, geography, ecology, and political economy to interrogate the socio-ecological foundations of capitalism from the early modern period to the present. Beyond academia, Moore is widely recognised for advancing the concept of the “Capitalocene,” which situates capitalism as the defining force behind the Anthropocene environmental crisis, thereby challenging dominant narratives that attribute ecological degradation to humanity in general.


I have chosen this book as it is not merely a contribution to ecological thought; it is a fundamental ontological repositioning of both the conceptual categories we use to describe capitalism and the very metaphysical architecture upon which modernity has been erected. Written in 2015 and developed over more than a decade of theoretical engagement, the book represents a turning point in the genealogy of eco-socialist critique, operating not just as an environmentalist manifesto, nor merely as a restatement of Marxian ecological positions, but as a systematic critique of the ontological bifurcation between nature and society that has haunted political economy, Enlightenment epistemology, and scientific method since their inception. Moore’s central thesis — that capitalism must be understood not as something acting upon nature, but as a world-ecology, an organising system of nature itself — is both radical and elegantly simple in its logical implications. It is not merely a reframing but a subversion of the anthropocentric metaphysics that has enabled the colonial, extractivist, and productive modalities of capital over the last five centuries.

Moore’s approach is grounded in the idea that modernity has produced a fetishised separation between the human and the non-human, a division perpetuated across ideological spectra, including both bourgeois economics and certain traditions of Marxism. While most ecological critiques of capitalism treat nature as a kind of inert backdrop or victim of productive forces, Moore instead posits that nature — or rather, natures — are co-produced through the metabolic processes of historical capitalism. The very fabric of social and economic life is embedded in ecological relations, and these relations are historically specific, mutable, and politically mediated. The book operates through this expanded metaphysical lens, wherein nature is neither passive nor external, but is constituted through relations of power, value, labour, and knowledge.

One of Moore’s most productive conceptual innovations is his notion of Cheap Nature, which does not denote simply affordability in a market sense, but refers to the systemic devaluation and appropriation of human and extra-human natures as a structural requirement for the perpetuation of capital accumulation. Cheap Nature includes the strategic underpricing of food, energy, raw materials, and labour-power, but it is also, and more importantly, an ontological operation: nature is rendered “cheap” through its positioning as external, inexhaustible, and subject to instrumental rationality. This process of cheapening is not accidental but is an epistemological and political operation enacted by imperial, capitalist, and scientific discourses since the early modern period. It is a theological-political operation, in the sense that it echoes the God–creation divide, translated into modern terms as Man versus Nature, with the former endowed with agency and purpose, and the latter reduced to a reservoir of resources.

Against this background, Moore develops the concept of the Capitalocene, which is intended to replace the now-ubiquitous term Anthropocene. Where the Anthropocene thesis often posits a universal humanity responsible for the ecological crisis — thereby flattening histories of imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and class struggle — Moore insists that it is not “humans” as such who have destroyed the planet, but a specific system of organising nature, namely capitalism. The Anthropocene, he suggests, is a deeply ideological construct, one which conveniently avoids naming the system that actually drives ecological breakdown. By contrast, the Capitalocene identifies the historical emergence of capitalism as a world-ecological regime beginning in the long sixteenth century, built upon successive waves of territorial expansion, primitive accumulation, and the systemic appropriation of cheap natures.

Moore’s historical narrative is as ambitious as it is specific. Drawing upon world-systems theory, particularly the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, he charts how early modern capitalism emerged not in factories but in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, in the silver mines of Potosí, in the forestry regimes of the Baltic, and in the Dutch land-reclamation projects of the Low Countries. These were not marginal or preliminary episodes, but central theatres in the production of capitalist ecology. Nature is not merely exploited in these contexts — it is produced, structured, governed, and appropriated through technological, legal, and military interventions. Indeed, Moore traces how capitalism’s drive for productivity has always required the continual discovery or invention of new frontiers — spaces in which nature could be rendered cheap, labour could be coerced or externalised, and value could be extracted with minimal cost. These frontiers are simultaneously geographical, epistemological, and ontological: they delineate the boundaries of what can be known, valued, and governed.

The brilliance of Capitalism in the Web of Life lies in Moore’s ability to weave these theoretical and historical strands into a compelling dialectical tapestry. Capitalism does not merely act upon a pre-given environment; it constitutes the environment as it acts. This dialectic, of co-production and metabolic interchange, is what he terms oikeios, an ancient Greek term which he repurposes to describe the dynamic, interpenetrating totality of human and extra-human natures. The oikeios is not a stable or harmonious unity but a field of conflict, transformation, and mutual conditioning. In this sense, Moore’s work resonates deeply with both ecological Marxism and process philosophy, but it also draws upon a subterranean tradition of non-dualist ontologies, which can be found in Daoism, certain strands of Buddhism, and indigenous cosmologies — all of which reject the opposition between the human and the non-human in favour of relational, interdependent views of reality.

In developing this dialectical world-ecology, Moore also re-theorises value. Marxist political economy traditionally locates value in human labour, abstracted through socially necessary labour time and realised in exchange. Moore does not reject this framework but supplements it by arguing that the conditions of possibility for labour, particularly labour-power, must be located in the web of unpaid and appropriated work done by nature — including human nature. This includes the unpaid labour of women in social reproduction, the coerced labour of enslaved peoples, the metabolic energy of forests and fossil fuels, the reproductive cycles of animals and plants. All of this unpaid work, which he terms work/energy, is essential for the production of surplus value, and yet lies outside the formal accounting practices of value theory. Thus, value in capitalism depends on a vast substratum of unvalued or under-valued activity — which is not external to capital, but internal to its ecology.

Moore’s argument becomes especially incisive when addressing the contemporary ecological crisis. He suggests that capitalism’s structural reliance on Cheap Nature has led it into a terminal contradiction: the exhaustion of frontiers. As the planet becomes saturated with commodity production, extractive regimes, and environmental feedback loops — from climate change to soil depletion, from biodiversity collapse to antibiotic resistance — capital’s capacity to secure cheap inputs is undermined. This results in rising costs, declining productivity, and intensifying social unrest. At the same time, efforts to innovate around these limits — such as green capitalism, technological substitution, or financialised carbon markets — merely reproduce the same logic of cheapening, externalising, and commodifying nature, without altering the underlying metabolic rift. Thus, Moore warns that capitalism may be approaching an epochal crisis, not merely of profitability or legitimacy, but of ontological viability.

There are moments in the book that read with prophetic urgency. One such moment occurs when Moore writes: “Capitalism makes nature, but it does so through an unstable dialectic of appropriation and exhaustion.” This sentence encapsulates the core tension at the heart of modernity: the drive to remake the world according to instrumental rationality, combined with the impossibility of infinite abstraction in a finite biosphere. The environmental limits we now face are not accidental by-products of development, but intrinsic outcomes of the capitalist way of organising life. Every attempt to stabilise this system through reform or mitigation fails to address its constitutive dependence on frontiers that no longer exist. In this sense, Moore’s work is not only critical but diagnostic: it tells us where we are in the history of the world-system, what forces have brought us here, and what structural tendencies are likely to shape the coming decades.

The book also implicitly invites cross-cultural and trans-philosophical dialogue. Although Moore himself remains within a Western Marxist tradition, the relational ontology he espouses aligns with several non-Western philosophical traditions that conceive of life as co-dependent, interwoven, and non-dualistic. One might fruitfully compare his oikeios with the Buddhist concept of pratītyasamutpāda — प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद — or dependent origination, which asserts that no being exists in isolation but only through interrelation. Similarly, Daoist cosmology, with its emphasis on the dynamic interplay of forces and the immanence of nature, offers resonant insights that could enrich Moore’s framework. Such comparative perspectives not only deepen the theoretical grounding of world-ecology but also help to decolonise the epistemological bases of ecological critique.

Yet despite its many strengths, the book is not without limitations. Some readers may find Moore’s prose overly dense, occasionally veering into theoretical abstraction that requires sustained attention and repeated reading. Moreover, his dialectical synthesis of ecology and economy, while conceptually robust, can at times lack the empirical granularity that might persuade sceptics from adjacent disciplines. There is also the issue of political prescription: while the diagnosis is powerful, the book offers relatively little in terms of concrete strategies for transition beyond capitalism, though one suspects that Moore would endorse a movement grounded in agroecology, feminist economics, democratic planning, and degrowth. Still, these are not oversights but deliberate methodological choices, since the book seeks first and foremost to reframe our understanding, not to offer programmatic solutions.

In conclusion, Capitalism in the Web of Life is one of the most important works of ecological theory published in the twenty-first century. It offers not just a critique of capitalism, but a profound transformation of the very categories through which we understand life, value, production, and environment. It demands that we rethink the historical origins of our present crisis, not as a failure of stewardship or moral oversight, but as the logical expression of a system built upon the abstraction, appropriation, and exhaustion of life itself. In doing so, it provides a conceptual armature for any serious anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, or anti-imperialist ecological politics. Its implications are as vast as the biosphere it seeks to liberate.

[Raks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cogí este libro con muchas ganas porque lo quería leer desde que acabé Molinos y Gigantes, de Jaume Franquesa, para quien las ideas de Moore servían de marco teórico.

Pues lo he intentado, pero madre mía, está escrito de manera muy críptica, no entiendo nada, qué frustración. Se acabó recurrir a fuentes primarias. A partir de ahora me fío de lo que diga la gente sobre lo que ha dicho otra gente.

[Rallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read; after listening to Jason speak at CIIS and reading a shorter piece by him in another book I think I can definitely agree with the statement that he's doing some of the most interesting work right now.

For the academically minded, this book would make a great companion to "Do Glaciers Listen?" by Julie Cruikshank, "Earth Beings" by Kim Tallbear, and to "Geontologies" by Elizabeth Povinelli.

[Eric Bottorff · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish. The intro chapter promised a lot, but the main body (at least the next three chapters or so) was mostly just an aggravating mix of bad economics and sloppy philosophy, with some solid insights scattered about. But the occasionally illuminating insights are not worth having to wade through so much sludge.

[Tomek · Rating 1 out of 5]

All but impenetrable to the non-expert.

[Atreyu_S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moore's work is interesting but it possesses some very serious issues.

While its historical geographical work is interesting, it is presented in a word 'sauce' that claims to be Marxist and to have found 'the missing link' for the abolishment of capitalism. Thus it seeks to provide an overarching theory for revolutionary socialism and the ecosocialist movement in general. While ambitious, the claim is unfounded and even coated in misleading ideology.

This claim is rooted within his analysis of capitalist society, which he views as a world-ecology — which is a concept rooted in worldsystem theory but expanded to include a historical geography of capital, i.e. its ecological dimensions. Moore's sees this analysis as one that is 'monist' insofar as it underlines the unity between capitalist society and nature, whereas most analysis of capitalism fail to make this connection to ecology — or they make it in an abstract sense, failing to concretely (re)construe that relation. Furthermore, this failure is no accident, Moore argues. Instead, within this failure lie the core clue of capitalism as a system. Namely, capitalism is a system that fails to recognise its connection, or, rather, roots in nature. Society is part of nature, internal to it. Capitalism develops as if separate, and, consequently, goes from crisis to crisis. This latter part — called the 'metabolic rift-shift dynamic' — is well documented in the work, which is its strongest point.

However, this is as far as my positive review goes. Namely, my first impression of the work was very positive as Moore's scope is vast. Yet, upon further reflection I could identify serious errors in the premise of the work. Its concept of capitalism and the methodology underlying the work — especially the revolutionary pretense of the work and it's so-called relation to praxis — are coated in ideology.

Namely, Moore's entire work centers around his concept of Nature/Society dualism, which he understands as an omnipresent cultural disposition which views society as seperate from nature, that is materialised under capitalism. Hence, his own work is an attempt to overcome and undermine this dualistic understanding, for he wishes to demonstrate how, evidently, this is not the case: society is connected to -and develops 'through' nature. He analyses the semantics of daily speech where one uses 'dualistic' words that posit such seperation and introduces a non-Cartesian vocabulary. This will help us get beyond the 'Cartesian binary' and adhere to a truly revolutionary theory. Moore argues in his introduction that the failure to recognise the destructive effects of the Cartesian binary has been the missing link for Marxism. Needless to say, tall trees catch a lot of wind. Hence, the argument must be examined.

One of the main issues I had with the work is that it treats (Cartesian) ideology as the root cause of capitalism and, hence, the ecological crisis. But not only does he see and treat capitalism as a consequence of ideology, he fails to understand ideology as a whole. Let me explain.

First of all, to approach history through ideology analysis, and to narrate history through that prism is hardly a materialist, dialectical analysis. The main issue with ideology is that it obstructs scientific analyses, yet that doesn't mean it causes the development itself. It plays a role in maintaining the status quo, but the actual laws of development are rooted within the contradictions between the natural world and human biology, from which human society springs and the social character of production, from which, in turn, modes of production emerge on the basis of contradictory property relations. Ideology plays a different role than Moore imagines it to have. The weight Moore attributes to 'Cartesian dualism', and thus to ideology, is itself an idealistic understanding, which assumes that the criticism of ideology needs to be the focal point of the ecosocialist movement. Yet Moore's criticism isn't a critique: it fails to understand the material conditions for Cartesian dualism, instead he treats it idealistically as a 'belief' that must be countered through a 'counter-belief', which Moore calls a " monist and relational ontology".

Sure Moore backs up his analysis with data, yet he still structures capitalist development as ordained by it's law of value which is premissed upon N/S dualism, making it appear that capitalism is an externalisation of 'Cartesian dualist' culture. Thus, instead of seeing Cartesian dualism or N/S dualism — which is an ontological , philosophical position — as a ideological internalisation of certain contradictory material conditions that have developed/deepened with the advent of capitalism, Moore abandons such a critical materialist point of view of alienation, instead criticising the alienation in idealistic manner.

This is important because it leads Moore to a critique of his Mentor J.B. Foster. He claims that Foster is dualistic when positing a 'metabolic rift or separation between nature and society', which for Moore doesn't describe a material condition but an ontological, dualistic error: nature and society can't be separate. Yet a metabolic separation isn't an ontological separation: the whole point of the concept of a metabolic rift is that a single metabolism while splitting into two different functioning systems, still interact in a higher or more fundamental level. The framework is materialist and non-metaphysical: the proposition is a material-analytical reference to distinct laws of development.

The key matter for every ecological Marxist is of course what causes capital's problematic law of development that contradict society and ecology. Yet this isn't ordained by some mystical alienated belief in cartesian dualism, but rooted in historical material conditions — e.g. the shift in property relations. Sure, Gramscian Cultural analysis is important in order to build an actual movement but surely that movement shouldn't abandon it's adherence to historical materialism by reducing the matter of revolutionary praxis to idealistic criticisms of the alienation of nature that advance the contemplation of society's unity with nature as the next big thing? Alienation must be overcome in practice, not in theory. That would be self-deception.

Ironically, Moore claims to represent Marx in his arguments and refine Foster's Cartesian appropriation of Marx. However, Marx scientific socialism, rooted in historical materialist analysis, would never defend the idea that society develops through a main belief/disposition. In this regard, Marx critique of religion is informative, for which he drew on Epicurus:

"Philosophy, as long as a drop of blood shall pulse in its world-subduing and absolutely free heart, will never grow tired of answering its adversaries with the cry of Epicurus: 'Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them, is truly impious.'"

So claimed Marx. Hence, instead of countering alienated notions with criticism, a materialist critique achieves to show the true material causes and thus illuminate scientifically. We must distinguish ideology from science, Marx believed, as only the latter could emancipate humanity in its truthful uncovering of one's suffering, conditions and their interrelation. Ironically, Moore instead sees (most) natural science and technology as mechanistic and Cartesian and argues that this is part of the whole problem. Yet for Marx, science and technology are simply tools for capital accumulation and its about who owns the means of production and whether we mobilise those for human need or private interests (unlimited profit). Here, Moore fails to distinguish sufficiently between capitalism as a concrete mode of production (political distribution of wealth) and human production in general (economic creation of wealth [labour + nature]). That is because much of its objects of critique categorised under 'Cartesian dualism' are simply characteristics of production in general, not capitalism per se. This is because Moore understand the massive productive capacities of capitalism as the main issue and thus broadly identifies that which has aided productivity under capitalism in order to throw out the baby with the bathwater. This is bad strategy. It is very true that certain technologies of scientific research don't serve human needs (fossil fuels, pesticides, nuclear), but they do serve a certain class and society. Yet these are only a consequence of social relations (expropriation/exploitation), hence we must focus on those and understand that the anti-ecological character of science & technology is only a consequence, not a cause, of class society. This is common sense: fossil industry/lobby and their economic/political power keeps the technology afloat, not dualism.

Hence, Moore takes an anti-capitalist/ecosocialist stance in the genre of utopian socialism: if we show how humanity is ultimately connected to nature we overcome the alienation of nature and undermine the ideological condition for capitalist development. But capitalism isn't a system that humanity created out of a belief. Instead of focussing on property relations and the material conditions for change, Moore focuses on N/S dualism as the root cause. However, this tragically leads him to criticise actual materialist concepts of socioecological contradiction such a the metabolic rift, as conceptualised by Foster. At the same time his entire analysis is rooted within the concept he claims is dualistic, but he justifies this by supplementing the notion of seperation with a notion of unity. Here, Moore fails to recognise the irony. Let me explain: either the concept of a metabolic rift is scientific or it's unscientific and idealistic nonsense. With Moore it's both. It's flawed in standing on itself, yet it's correct if part of a larger analysis of capitalism as a worldecology, which develops through a metabolic rift and shift dialectic. Irony strikes again, for this rift-shift dynamic was first theorised by Foster as well, but Moore pretends its his invention insofar as he 'systematises' it. The issue is that his systematisation is built upon the idea that 'the metabolic rift' by itself is blind to N/S dualism and supports it, hence it must be coupled to a broader analysis that shows how every 'rift' leads to a 'shift' which in turn leads to another 'rift' and so on... However, this stands on the argument that the notion of a metabolic shift is rooted in a critique of the notion of a metabolic rift, yet this is false. Foster's notion of a shift follows from a materialist-dialectical understanding the rift-shift dynamic (cf. his work 'The ecological rift'). There is no real reason to argue that the notion of a synthesis develops from a critique from a preceding notion of contradiction. The only reason such a critique makes sense in in the idealistic sense that an actual contradiction is overcome by pointing towards a underlying, deeper unity — which evidently fails to alter the actual circumstances. The socioecological contradictions are the issue at hand, sure, but the emphasis upon it isn't the issue. Similarly, the emphasis upon separation isn't the main issue, and the emphasis upon N/S unity isn't the main solution.

The whole point of Marx's critique of ideology was to develop a historical materialist theory that could guide practice/direct action. We must see how our production and the system of ownership behind it exploits us and distributes the wealth — which workers themselves produce — unfairly in accordance with private ownership. But why would we need these owners? This is undemocratic. Workers need to own means of productions themselves and associate freely with one another, not associate with capitalist industries because they have no other option than to perform wage-labour for their masters. The addition of ecological marxism is to understand that a capitalist system is rooted in production for profit vs. production for human need. This is made possible by private ownership over nature (expropriation) in order to maximise production and extract profit. In turn, this aids in consolidating one's social power and thus ability to exploit those who own nothing. Hence, social alienation goes hand in hand with the alienation of nature: the system of capital is born. This approach underlines the necessity of common ownership over one's own means of production which helps curb the social inequality which allows for social exploitation and excessive appropriation of nature, i.e. outside of human need ordained by the need for never-ending profit.

That said, I just don't see how an exclusive focus on capital's unity with nature helps us dismantle that system. Similarly, I don't see notions of its separate character as inherently ontologically dualist. The issue is ideology in general, which conceals a scientific understanding of the world and is able to correctly relate one's sufferings to capitalism. Moore's concept of ideology appears to be reduced to Cartesian Dualism, but this doesn't account for the plethora of Monistic ideologies that exist.

Upon further reflection I noticed that Moore's framework is excellent to justify his own research interest though: in his views world-ecological research becomes the next big thing. His 'monist' notions inflate the importance of historical geography as that which overcomes N/S dualism and thus aids revolutionary praxis. However, such research, while interesting in its own right, doesn't need such an inflated methodological justification. The whole justification is forced to such an extent that Moore starts to critique clear cut concepts of capitalist socioecological contradiction in general. Instead, revolutionary consciousness emerges from the experience, understanding and action against capital's contractions. A concept of contradiction is certainly helpful for conscious resistance. Moore displaces the matter of synthesis (revolutionary praxis) to the sphere of the ideal: instead of changing material circumstances through praxis geared at synthesis (and rooted in a theory of contradiction) one must contemplate the synthesis underneath the apparent contradictions, was these are flawed notions. Of course this puts the world on its own head. Moore thus sterilises the revolutionary potential of Ecological Marxism for the sake of promoting a type of research/thinking that will never really achieve anything in practice despite being triggered by an imagined Cartesian Dualist spirit in the speech of others and which penetrates the minds of unassuming individuals, and, most importantly, on which the whole fabric of the Capitalist system rests. Indeed, it is as absurd as it sounds. Hence, this review: it is simply a delusion and waste of time. Unless you desire to be a speculative thinker, world-ecology research, i.e. research into metabolic shifts, is just interesting but nothing revolutionary per se. If you want real change and urgently it's utility is certainly there but also limited. Moore seems to have taken the importance of his research interest to absurd levels, as evident from his philosophical reflections in the work.

I would still recommend to read the work, it is a solid introduction to ecological Marxism that is accessible and imaginative. It will certainly spark further interest. It seeks to systematise Marx' Capital with ecology through the lens of historical geography, which is the main achievement of the work, as noted before. In this regard Moore's work deserves praise. Yet it must be read with some caution. If done so it might even be a benefit, for the work potentially aptly demonstrates the idealistic trappings many 'made' academics tend to fall in.

[Conor · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely exceptional environmental sociology resource that has been much needed in my own studies!

This time around, I've decided to resist the temptation to take a peek at the other reviews before I've had a chance to formulate my own thoughts. That said, I'm writing in the context of having been disconnected from North American sociology (and environmental sociology for that matter) for nearly half a decade. It may very well be the case that my ringing endorsement is more a reflection of the sad state of European environmental sociology than it is of the value of Moore's insights, but I'm inclined to lean towards the latter. It's hard to say though, after months of reading paper after paper espousing ecological modernization, postmaterialist values, or simply stringing together a battery of nauseatingly myopic and irrelevant insular studies of "procedural justice" conflicts that have little to do with environmental crises and everything to do with paper mills and their constituent paper-pushers capitalizing on whatever petit bourgeois "protests" get picked up in local or regional newspapers. "Ten points for Gryffindor," and another thousand dollars awarded to the university that simultaneously opts to study windmill farms constructed in "ethnic Norwegian" neighborhoods while turning a blind eye towards the disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples in a comparable construction project a municipality or two over, whilst sending their researchers to Israel to help build oil platforms off the coast of Gaza.

Despite a few typographical errors not picked up in editing before printing, this was one of the better organized and more readable texts I have come across on the subject more recently. Compared with e.g. Foster's treatment of the subject, Moore offers a whole lot more in terms of actual usable theory and his writing allows readers to make connections to more concrete analyses without jeopardizing the integrity of the nuance of the theory's abstraction.

It seems clear to me that Moore takes a few liberties with Marxist theory (perhaps more than I might be comfortable with), but I don't think I'm confident enough to speak to just how far Moore ultimately takes things. In any event, I don't think that these intellectual freedoms are necessarily too far-fetched, and in stark contrast to most other "Marxist" sociologists, these deviations actually serve a purpose beyond banal academic navel-gazing and envelope-pushing. It's always refreshing to read an author who understands that "radical" means "radical"--not shock-jockeying over redefining "radical" to mean "profoundly unradical". Since Moore isn't a hack appropriating Marx to go along with the goofy turtleneck-wearing Big Professor on Campus schtick, historical materialism is actually incorporated in a contemporary theory that fits into a structural analysis in a way that really shows. If that wasn't enough, Moore also manages to present a framework of Society and Nature as co-produced that isn't so cliché that it makes you want to gag.

The only complaint worth mentioning is the lack of a hard-hitting, convincing discussion on what the alternative looks like, but on the other hand, I think it would be unreasonable to expect that. Whatever could be printed would always fall short of what should be inferred from the application of a good theory, and this is precisely what Moore makes possible here. What he does offer is a bit weak in my view, but towards the end, he offers a few ingresses for further exploration that could push things in precisely that direction.

Great read that I think has been greatly overlooked and which should absolutely be considered as reading material in environmental sociology courses at the master's level.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really oscillated between giving this 3 or 4 stars while reading. To get something out of this book, the reader definitely needs to have a decent familiarity with a variety of scholarly canons: Marxist theory, economic historiography, and environmental historiography. Fortunately, coming in I have recently read a decent amount of environmental history and was anticipating a thorough discussion of the "Cartesian divide" problem between humanity and nature. What I was not entirely expecting, and I should have, was that the author heavily utilizes Marx's theories from Capital (the tendency of profit to fall, the crisis of overproduction, the necessity of frontiers, etc.). Luckily I had just read a book comparing Capital and Dante's Inferno (Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital), so I was a little bit more prepared than I would have been had I not read that book.

A lot of this book is repetitive abstract argumentation, but if you can get past that, then there are some incredible moments that Moore discusses. The strongest parts of the book are when Moore leaves the realm of theory to discuss specific examples of the relationship between capitalism and nature, dating back to the 15th-C. One example is how the British agricultural revolution in the 18th-C ended not because the soil could not produce more yields, but because British farmers refused to invest in capital-intensive production which would produce more yields, effectively ending the British agricultural revolution and enabling cheap produce to emerge elsewhere. These moments were fascinating and insightful.

Unfortunately, these examples are often separated by dense theoretical arguments that really only boil down to a few solid, and often common-sensical points: humanity and nature are dialectically intertwined at every level; for an enterprise (or capital in the abstract) to accumulate wealth, it needs sustained immediate access to cheap labor, raw materials, energy, and food; agricultural revolutions are just as important (and emerged way earlier) than mechanized revolutions in the history of capitalism; new frontiers (full of cheap or "free" labor/nature) must consistently open up to prevent overproduction/underproduction/overaccumulation crises from emerging; unpaid work/energy (appropriated nature and domestic labor) are just as crucial to capital accumulation as wage work.

This book could definitely be better organized if it downplayed the theorization and incorporated more of the history, especially since the author explicitly calls for scholars to begin analyzing humanity-in-nature as one dialectically entangled system. We get glimpses of this throughout the book, but I would have much preferred a synthetic history account that narratives the 500-year history of capitalism with Moore's concept of humanity-in-nature front and center.

I'm giving the book 4 stars, however, because I think Moore's book can provide another scholar the way forward to writing such a history.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a useful thinking tool for me, and its key arguments will shape my application of Marx for some time. The injunction to rethink the relationship between appropriation and exploitation, and to recognize that capitalism must “produce” cheap natures before it can appropriate them, really worked for me, because it helped me extend what I’ve already learned from Marxist-feminist analyses of social reproduction to the realm of environmental critique. I’m convinced that accumulation depends on the rate of appropriation exceeding the rate of exploitation, and Moore’s analysis made me rethink how I’ve tended to understand modern “frontiers” (in media, finance, etc). It’s not enough for capital to invent and enclose virtual frontiers if it cannot restore the “four cheaps” (food, labour, energy, material inputs). Maybe that should’ve been obvious, but I’ll credit Moore’s materialist analysis with making it more clear to me than it has been before.

I’m generally sympathetic to calls for a more “dialectical” criticism, so I was ready to agree with Moore about that: certainly, it is more useful to identify ways in which nature is made to work for capital than to treat nature as a static repository of “resources.” That said, I think the book falls into a trap familiar to Marxist thinkers and sympathizers: it leans heavily on the claim that theoretical problems can be solved by making theory more dialectical, but it’s explanation of what that means is basically, “if you know, you KNOW.” As one of the people who thinks she “knows” - I agree, naturally! But bashing un-dialectical Cartesian dualism (or “bourgeois” science, or rationalism, or whatever) won’t win over any skeptics. The book spends too long doing that, in my opinion. If the intent was to preach to the dialectical crowd, then there’s no need to drag dualism at such length, because we already understand its limitations. If the intent was to make non-dialecticians see the value of dialectics for environmental critique, then you need more compelling explanations.

The book also spends a lot of time quibbling with periodizations. Moore takes issue with the “anthropocene” and thinks fossil fuels are an overrated chapter the capital-nature story. In response (i think?) he dwells at great length on the 16th century and the 1970s. The fact that one of these special, singled-out periods is a century and the other is a decade confounds me, notwithstanding Moore’s attempts to balance the disproportion by calling the 1970s “the long 1970s.” Maybe geographers and/or 20thC historians actually use this term, but I’ve never come across it and found it very weird (to be fair, I’m a 19thC specialist). After my disappointment with the book’s theoretical opening (too much Descartes bashing, weak argument for dialectics, playing fast and loose with “agency”), I was craving some solid historicization, but Moore’s historical analysis was too rambling and unbalanced to be useful for me.

On the whole, then, Capitalism in the Web of Life doesn’t quite make it to four stars for me, despite genuinely moving my thoughts on a few theoretical points. I wish I could give it a 3.5!

[Daniel Ares · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most important books on political economy in the history of Western thought. This work is as important as the major works of Adam Smith and Marx. This is a masterwork in political economy, economic history, environmental philosophy and Marxist thought and it will be a classic for many years. It is the first book that solves the question of how to understand the interconnection between the Earth, labor and capitalism. And it does it brilliantly. I'm not going to summarize it here because Jason W. More does it wonderfully at the introduction and conclusion sections. But to really understand it, you need to read the whole book and get familiar with the concepts he uses. If you read the whole book with some effort and curiosity you get the whole thing. And the whole thing is no more and no less than an intellectual Revolution. In all honesty, the bad reviews because it's not a clear or engaging read are respectable but also ridiculous. It is not an engaging or fun work. It is a very important one. A major contribution to understanding how our civilization has originated and developed historically for the last 500 years by appropriating and exploiting lands, the subsoil, the atmosphere, the oceans, biological life itself, and self-reproducing human and non-human communities at a breathtaking scale. Capital accumulation and "growth" was about that and Moore shows very clearly and precisely how. And this is not an abstract theoretical argumentation. He provides historical examples and references to a multitude of sources and data from very different fields, both historical and contemporary.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit rough to get through---especially due to Moore's Marxian tendency to constantly loop back on his core arguments---but it definitely feels like there are some Big Ideas here. If you want a deeper analysis on capitalist accumulation and how it plays out in practice it's well worth the effort. The last chapter is pretty bleak---though i'm not convinced we wont find new frontiers for extraction/dispossession---but the overall message about how capitalism can't really work without the ability to appropriate the Four Cheaps (energy, labor, food, raw materials), no matter how much exploitation is happening, is pretty interesting. Viewing the accumulation process as more Borg-like as capitalism spreads its tendrils, creating new social relations among both people and the environment, rather than a simple process of of enclosure and dispossession, seems on point as well. A lot to think about.

[Thijmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeez, this book is really dense.

The focus of the book is on expanding the ecological notion of the human-in-nature dialectic (as compared to the human-and-nature dualism) to the political and the methodological. By positioning capitalism in nature, rather than affecting it from the outside, we can ask the right questions. Like how capitalism is limited by its own intra-actions with itself and how to solve the crises that are created.

'Does capitalism today face the end of Cheap Nature? Of course, nature in a holistic
sense is never cheap. Cheap Nature is the invention of a civilization premised on
dualism. For five centuries, that dualism proved extraordinarily functional. Natures were
appropriated. Capital was accumulated. Wastes were dumped overboard. That logic—
and the strategies premised on it—has now reached the end of its particular road.
Another course will have to be charted.

[Niusha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinnngg.
Read this 5+ yrs ago and still think about it / utilize it to understand the world nearly everyday.

“capitalism is premised on the separation of Humanity and Nature” and therefore, capitalism alienates us from nature through its violent abstraction of all natures, humans included. Love this idea esp with Marx’s theories of alienation in his 1844 Manuscripts: 1. Alienation of man from his work (activity of his labor) 2. Alienation of man from the product of his labor 3. Alienation of man from himself / his humanity and 4. Alienation of man from others/society.

When nature is cheapened, then animals are cheapened, and human beings are cheapened. Because cheap nature is cheap because the human labor used to make them is devalued.

I just love the way he critiques the Human/Nature binary. It allows the reader to also think about and critique other binaries which exist solely to devalue and serve the oppressive capitalist system.

[Pris · Rating 2 out of 5]

More like 2.5
Takeaways: A pretty neat history of early capitalism, how it has sustained itself via what Moore calls the Four Cheaps. The books attempts a synthesis of Marxism (particularly the notion of 'value') and environmental thought. While this seems like an admirable project in the beginning, Moore's central concept of "oikeios" (borrowed from Theophrastus) appears in the opening portions and then falls through the cracks, only to reappear briefly in the end. I also wasn't very clear about how different 'the web of life' is from similar theoretical concepts- Say Timothy Morton's 'mesh.' A useful read.

[Quinn Monette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Takes some big swings and I don't think it connects. I'm wary of the world systems approach. I think it makes more sense to speak of capitalisms than an all-encompassing capitalism, which besides being inaccurate, affords capitalism the kind of total power that makes it inescapable. I'm also apprehensive of a certain hermeneutic of Marx that's basically like, "he was right all along if you only refer to [x arcane passage]." Indulges in just enough wordplay and neologisms to piss me off. Dunking on Descartes was fun as an undergrad but strikes me as a rather lazy rhetorical move now. A mostly unpleasant read.

[Jed Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unsettling but eye-opening book that reconfigures Marxist economic theory as ecological theory. While I struggled to make sense of some basic Marxian concepts (value, reproduction, commoditization, labor) when deployed in this revolutionary context, by the end I came to better understand both capitalism as an ecologically-altering and -determined phenomenon, producer and product of nature's possibilities and limits. A truly consciousness expanding work that made me both despairing and hopeful about the shape of the inevitable next stage of life on Earth.

[Cameron Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Critical intervention that argues that capitalism is both a political economic and ‘world-ecological’ phenomenon - it seeks to engage nature as a fount of the ‘four cheaps’ (labour, food, raw materials, energy) necessary to maintain dynamics of production and accumulation. In Moore’s rendering, capitalism interacts with nature in a necessarily exploitative and mutable way - where access to the ‘four cheaps’ is compromised in any way, capitalism must re-innovate to survive.

[Ethan Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

not quite what i expected, i was looking for what moore would call a historically specific account of capitalism-in-life, rather than a theory-focused account. however:

very compelling, although extremely dense and theory focused. it's a testament to these ideas and moore's that i was able to make it through. i do think the most interesting chapter was the last, as it was more historically specific.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating historical account that explains the dialectic between capitalism and nature, and how each co-produce each other ever since the rise of capitalism from the 16 century Dutch hegemony, passing through the Industrial Revolution, all the way to the current neoliberal era.

It is a somehow dense reading, immersed in Marxist theory, but provides crucial insights to understand our current ecological, economic and political crisis.

[melancholinary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoy the historical account of capitalism and its theorisation. Solid argument on capitalism as an ecological regime. Minor note: quite often it gets really repetitive, especially when it dissects value theory—which also for me is still very much align to classical Marxist argument, though there are several on-point critiques here and there. Nevertheless, an interesting read!

[Cana McGhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

a kind of in-the-weeds discussion about why the nature-human binary does not work, especially re: discussing the global history of capitalism. the conversation feels very 2010s (i.e. it feels dated for a lot of the current arguments about capitalism and climate change). and it's really missing a serious conversation about race, but does a lot with class, for what it's worth.