Abstract
In Capitalism and the Web of Life, Jason Moore advances an innovative new paradigm in environmental history and political economy: world-ecology. Moore aims to exorcise the ghost of Descartes lingering in the ‘nature plus society’ binaries of contemporary green thought. To this end, he offers a new reading of Marx’s ‘law of value’ defined by a dialectic of appropriation and exploitation, the latter being dependent upon the capacity to appropriate ‘Cheap Nature’. ‘Four cheaps’ – labor-power, food, energy, and raw materials – subtend innovations in commodity production. Every great era of accumulation has been predicated upon new frontiers that provide an ecological surplus, enabling the appropriation of nature’s unpaid work to proceed faster than the rate of exploitation. Yet, the temporalities of the capitalist value-form exhaust zones of appropriation, necessitating the capitalization of once freely appropriated natures, raising costs, and precipitating crises.
Moore argues that such crises have primarily been resolved though combinations of science, capital, and empire: the state constructs scientific, cartographical, and metrological knowledges that render new natures quantifiable and fungible (‘abstract social nature’). Yet, this capacity is now fundamentally limited as the contemporary crises of neoliberalism signal the end of the frontier. The double burden of resource exhaustion and toxification forces capital to spend more and extract less – a process Moore terms ‘negative-value’: ‘accumulation of the limits to capital in the web of life that are direct barriers to the restoration of the Four Cheaps’ (p. 277). In this conjuncture, Moore sees the potential collapse of capitalism: This unsavory convergence … is rapidly undermining the possibility for ‘normal’ capitalism to survive, over the medium run of the next 20-30 years. The contradictions of capitalism have always been escapable, until now, because there were escape hatches: peasantries to be proletarianized, new oil fields to exploit … These processes continue, albeit under progressively more ruthless conditions. (p. 280)
The exhaustion–pollution feedback loop is undermining capital’s strongest historical justification – delivering the goods – and opening space for radical social movements to ‘reimagine’ the ontology of value and nature. Moore sees hope in food sovereignty and food justice movements, but notes that ‘state power will be needed … to re-orient agriculture towards democratic and sustainable practices’, acknowledging that the state remains the ‘elephant in the room’ (p. 288, n241).
Moore thus remains faithful to Marx’s dictum that the limit to capital is capital itself. From this perspective, class struggle hinges on the construction of alternative socio-ecological relations (primarily around food) to replace an already-dying system. This is, first, an ironic conclusion to a book that so deftly catalogues capital’s dynamism, and second, a deeply troubling proposition for radical politics. Moore’s admittedly capital-centric approach comes across as far too sanguine about the inevitable collapse of capitalism under the weight of its own contradictions. Even if Moore’s outlook is correct (a contestable prospect), it elides the class power of capitalism. Capital and capitalist states will not merely allow the system to wither away in the face of socio-ecological crisis. Here, Moore’s distinction between ‘normal’ capitalism and ‘more ruthless conditions’ is crucial. In the face of existential crises, capital and state are mobilizing increasingly ruthless forms of oppression, and riskier reconfigurations of socio-natural processes (e.g. gene editing and geoengineering). These ventures may signal capital’s death knell, but they also have the capacity to expand capitalist hegemony well into the future. We cannot be certain. Thus, while alternatives are vital, the transcendence of capitalism demands direct, confrontational struggle (and indeed requires us to confront the elephant of state).