Jason W. Moore on Socialism in the Web of Life
Future Histories International
Beyond Collapse Narratives
This chapter critiques the neo-Malthusian collapse narratives prevalent in leftist discourse, arguing that they often serve elite interests rather than addressing real environmental crises. It explores the detrimental impacts of monopolistic capitalism on natural resources and living standards, while emphasizing the need for crisis-oriented socialist solutions. The discussion also highlights the dangers of greenwashing and advocates for accountability from the ultra-wealthy in addressing ecological issues.
Jason W. Moore discusses the problematic history of the nature-society divide, his alternative world-ecology approach and the challenges of building socialism.
Shownotes
Jason’s personal website:
Jason at Binghamtom University:
https://www.binghamton.edu/sociology/faculty/profile.html?id=jwmoore
The World-Ecology Research Collective:
https://worldecologynetwork.wordpress.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/lab/World-Ecology-Research-Collective-Jason-W-Moore
Moore, J. W., & Patel, R. (2020). A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/817-a-history-of-the-world-in-seven-cheap-things
Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life. Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/74-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life
for an overview of different approaches to conceptualizing society/capitalism and nature:
https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/ecology-marxism-andreas-malm/
on Andreas Malm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Malm
Malm, A. (2018). The Progress of this Storm. Nature and Society in a Warming World. Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/574-the-progress-of-this-storm
Malm, A. (2016). Fossil Capital. The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/135-fossil-capital
Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia.
https://files.libcom.org/files/Caliban%20and%20the%20Witch.pdf
on Ernst Haeckel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel
see also the chapter on Haeckel and the German Monist League in:
Gasman, D. (2017). The scientific Origins of National Socialism. Routledge.
on Actor-Network Theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory
on Bruno Latour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour
on John Bellamy Foster:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bellamy_Foster
Bellamy, J. F. (2000) Marx’s Ecology. Materialism and Nature. Monthly Review Press.
https://ia904504.us.archive.org/9/items/526394/John%20Bellamy%20Foster.%20Marx%27s%20Ecology..pdf
on Kohei Saito:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohei_Saito
on Pietro Verri:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Verri
Marx, K. (1976). Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume One. Penguin.
https://www.surplusvalue.org.au/Marxism/Capital%20-%20Vol.%201%20Penguin.pdf
Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm
Marx’s and Engel’s German Ideology:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/
Marx’s Capital Vol. 3.:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/
Marx’s On The Jewish Question:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
on Alfred Sohn-Rethel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sohn-Rethel
Machado, C. & Miguel, N. (2013). The Money of the Mind and the God of Commodities. The real abstraction according to Sohn-Rethel.
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48961/1/MPRA_paper_48961.pdf
on Donna Haraway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
on the “Special Period” in Cuba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period
on James Lovelock:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
Lovelock, J. (1979). Gaia. A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gaia-9780198784883?cc=de&lang=en&#
on “Social metabolism”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_metabolism
on Raymond Williams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Williams
Smele, J. D. (2016). The ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916-1926. Ten Years that Shook the World. Hurst.
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-russian-civil-wars-1916-1926/
Engel-Di Mauro, S. (2021). Socialist States and the Environment. Lessons for Eco-Socialist Futures. Pluto Press.
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340418/socialist-states-and-the-environment/
Amin, S. (1990). Delinking. Towards a Polycentric World. Zed Books.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/delinking-9780862328030/
on material and energy flow accounting:
see the chapter on that topic in:
Bartelmus, P. (2008). Quantitative Eco-nomics. How sustainable are our economies. Springer.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4020-6966-6
Zeug, W. (2025). INDEP talk with Walther Zeug: Democratic Economic Planning through Cybernetics & Holistic Accounting.
https://youtu.be/I4_8_lDfwEw?si=J-kdRzjIehZqPgs0
Kula, W. (2016). Measures and Men. Princeton University Press.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691639079/measures-and-men
Echterhölter, A. M. (2019). Quantification as Conflict. Witold Kula’s Political Metrology and Its Reception in the West . Historyka : studia metodologiczne, 49, 117-141 . Article 9.
https://journals.pan.pl/Content/114031/PDF/7%20ECHTERH%C3%96LTER.pdf
on Max Weber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber
on Double-entry bookkeeping:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping
on “proletarian science”:
Moore, J.W. (2025). Nature and other dangerous words: Marx, method and the proletarian standpoint in the web of life. Dialectical Anthropology. 49, 149–167.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10624-025-09775-x
on Ecosystem services:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_service
on the “Ecological footprint” concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint
on Thomas Müntzer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer
on the Royal Botanic Gardens/Kew Gardens:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Botanic_Gardens_(Kew)
on the Stakhanovite movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement
on Cybernetics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics
on Earth systems science:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_system_science
Selcer, P. (2018). The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment. How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth. Columbia University Press.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-postwar-origins-of-the-global-environment/9780231166485/
Medina, E. (2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile. MIT Press.
https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Eden_Medina_Cybernetic_Revolutionaries.pdf
on Cybernetics in the Soviet Union:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union
on the Transitional demand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_demand
see also:
Trotsky’s The Transitional Program:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/
on the Green New Deal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal
on the European Green Deal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Deal
on Geoengineering:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering
on Johan Rockström:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Rockstr%C3%B6m
on Planetary boundaries:
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html
Klein, N. (2015). This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the Climate. Penguin.
https://thischangeseverything.org/book/
Kushi, S., & Toft, M. D. (2022). Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776–2019. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 67(4), 752-779.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221117546
on Allen Dulles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles
on Reinhard Gehlen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen
Talbot, D. (2016). The Devil’s Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. Harper Collins.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-devils-chessboard-david-talbot?variant=32207669559330
on the concept of the Deep State:
Scott, P. D. (1996). Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. University of California Press.
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/deep-politics-and-the-death-of-jfk/paper
Scott, P. D. (2017). The American Deep State. Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy. Rowman & Littlefield.
https://archive.org/details/americandeepstat0000scot/page/n5/mode/2up
Good, A. (2022). American Exception. Empire and the Deep State. Skyhorse Publishing.
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510769144/american-exception/
on the origin of the concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_Turkey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susurluk_car_crash
recently released files relating to the assassination of JFK on the website of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA):
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release-2025
on the current state of knowledge on the Nord Stream Pipeline Explosion:
on the Nord Stream Pipeline Explosion releasing massive Amounts of Methane:
https://youtu.be/7KBsf7bX9Nc?si=tDIxlFFF2ThO6Aeb
on Systems Dynamics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics
the ‘Limits to Growth’ Report, commissioned by the Club of Rome:
https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/
the Club of Rome:
on Jay Wright Forrester:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester
on the concept of the Anthropocene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
on James C. Scott:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott
Mies, M. & Bennholdt-Thomsen, V. (1999). The Subsistence Perspective. Beyond the Globalised Economy. Zed Books.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/subsistence-perspective-9781856497763/
on the New Economic Policy (NEP):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
on the Belt and Road Initiative:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
Nachmani, A. (1990). Civil War and Foreign Intervention in Greece: 1946-49. Journal of Contemporary History, 25(4), 489–522.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/260759
on the “Soft Coup against the Wilson Labour Government”:
https://www.declassifieduk.org/a-possible-coup-against-the-labour-government/
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/history/the-cold-war/the-wilson-plot
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment.labour1
on the actions of the US against North Korea in the Korean War:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Korean_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_biological_warfare_in_the_Korean_War
on the Cultural Revolution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
on Mao’s concept of the Mass Line:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.htm
on Jung’s concept of the Collective unconscious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious
on (Neo-)Malthusianism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
Ehrlich, P. R. (1971). The Population Bomb. Ballantine Books.
http://pinguet.free.fr/ehrlich68.pdf
Tainter, J. A. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press.
https://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/Joseph-A-Tainter-The-collapse-of-complex-societies.pdf
on Millenarianism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenarianism
Enzensberger, H. M. (1978). Two Notes on the End of the World. New Left Review. I/110.
Hansen, J. (2010). Storms of my Grandchildren. The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. Bloomsbury.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/storms-of-my-grandchildren-9781408807460/
Sweezy, P.M. (1990). Monopoly Capitalism. In: Eatwell, J., Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) Marxian Economics. Palgrave Macmillan.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-20572-1_44
on Technofeudalism:
Varoufakis, Y. (2024). Technofeudalism. What Killed Capitalism. Penguin.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781529926095
Durand, C. (2024). How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism. The Making of the Digital Economy. Verso.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2790-how-silicon-valley-unleashed-techno-feudalism
Culture, Power and Politics Podcast episode on the debate around the concept “Technofeudalism”:
https://culturepowerpolitics.org/2025/07/04/is-capitalism-over-the-technofeudalism-debate/
Conservation International:
Earth League International:
https://earthleagueinternational.org/
Rockström, J. et al. (2024). The Planetary Commons. A new Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-regulating Systems in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301531121
the Trilateral Commission:
the Earth Commission:
Johan Rockström’s interview in the Guardian:
Future Histories Episodes on Related Topics
S3E44 | Anna Kornbluh on Climate Counteraesthetics
https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e44-anna-kornbluh-on-climate-counteraesthetics/
S03E33 | Tadzio Müller zu solidarischem Preppen im Kollaps
S03E30 | Matt Huber & Kohei Saito on Growth, Progress and Left Imaginaries
S03E23 | Andreas Malm on Overshooting into Climate Breakdown
S03E19 | Wendy Brown on Socialist Governmentality
https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e19-wendy-brown-on-socialist-governmentality/
---
If you are interested in democratic economic planning, these resources might be of help:
Democratic planning – an information website
https://www.democratic-planning.com/
Sorg, C. & Groos, J. (eds.)(2025). Rethinking Economic Planning. Competition & Change Special Issue Volume 29 Issue 1.
https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ccha/29/1
Groos, J. & Sorg, C. (2025). Creative Construction - Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond. Bristol University Press. [for a review copy, please contact: amber.lanfranchi[at]bristol.ac.uk]
https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction
International Network for Democratic Economic Planning
Democratic Planning Research Platform:
https://www.planningresearch.net/
---
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Episode Keywords
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