Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism

By Kamran Nayeri

This book outlines Ecocentric Socialism as a theory of humanity embedded in nature to understand and help solve social and ecological crises of the twenty-first century, especially the existential crises of catastrophic climate change, the Sixth Extinction, recurring pandemics, and nuclear holocaust. Aside from the obvious cases, scientists in related fields have come to a consensus that these are anthropogenic (human-caused) crises. Some of its key features are as follows:
• An ecological theory of human nature. Thanks to recent discoveries about the microbiome, we now know that humans are collective organisms that have been co-evolving with microbial communities, trillions of bacteria, viruses, yeasts, protozoa, and fungi. The microbiome affects our gut, which affects our brain. Also, the brain affects our gut, which affects our microbiome. Disruptions to the gut microbiome, say by infection or a change in diet, can trigger reactions in the body that may affect psychological, behavioral, and neurological health. In brief, who we are and how we think and feel and behave, is partly the result of the dynamic interactions between human cells and bacteria, viruses, yeasts, protozoa, and fungi that live as part of us.
• A much longer view of history which places society in its natural context. This new knowledge about our ecological nature must be placed in the context of the dynamics of the following trends: (1) The geophysical trend which recognizes that life emerged from non-life 3.7 million years ago and that we are an earthbound, oxygen-breathing, energy-using species dependent upon our physical environment—especially the atmosphere, soil, and temperature range remaining compatible with human life, (2) the evolutionary transhistorical trend which recognizes and celebrates our continuity with other animals, (3) the evolutionary trend cumulating in the genus Homo going back 2.5 million years and the emergence of Homo sapiens at least 300,000 ago, and (4) the recent historical development since the rise of farming 12,000 years ago and class societies (civilization) about 5,000 years ago.
• Animistic materialism. The Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed in tandem with commercialization of the world and later with the rise of the capitalist mode of production effectively suppressed animistic views of nature prevalent across the world in favor of a mechanical view of nature. This included even the science of ecology. As a Native American and a professional biologist, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2023, p. 331, emphasis added) has put it this way: "The ecosystem is not a machine, but a community of beings, subjects rather than objects. What if those beings were the drivers?" In socialist and ecosocialist theories also, despite allusions to "dialectics of nature," humanity is the sole subject in "history." Animistic materialism and its philosophic gaze, that I call ecocentrism, gives agency to all animate and inanimate beings as manifested in their interrelationship. Ecocentric Socialism is built on animistic materialism. Whereas socialist and ecosocialist theories by and large are based on the Western scientific approach to nature, Ecocentric Socialism shares animistic views of nature with hunter-gatherers and Indigenous Peoples of the world that are surprisingly much closer to what we know about the natural world and our place in it since Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the current knowledge of what makes us human. The difference is fundamental, in that, the anthropocentric socialist and ecosocialist theories and policy proposals generally share the idea of a "sustainable society" where the socialist humanity will manage ecosystems wisely. In animistic views of nature, humanity can never become managers of nature, and attempts to do so on a large scale will create ecological crises as we know from 5,000 years of civilization...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350915372

Book preview

Title

Whose Planet?

Essays on Ecocentric Socialism

©2023 Kamran Nayeri

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 979-8-35091-140-4

Cover design by Mehdi Gooran Savadkohi

Cover photos by Kamran Nayeri

For Mother Earth

and

Rosa Luxemburg

Henry David Thoreau:

I wish to speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so, I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee, and every one of you will take care of that.

… [I]n Wildness is the preservation of the World.

—Walking, May 1862

Rosa Luxemburg:

I feel so much more at home even in a scrap of garden like the one here, and still more in the meadows when the grass is humming with bees than at one of our party congresses.

—Letter to Sophie Liebknecht from Breslau Prison, May 2, 1917

Robin Wall Kimmerer:

The ecosystem is not a machine, but a community of sovereign beings, subjects rather than objects. What if those beings were the drivers?

—Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge,

and the Teachings of Plants, 2013, p. 331

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Economics, Socialism, and Ecology: A Critical Outline

The Age of the Economist?

What Is Economics?

Marx’s Paradigm Shift

Neoclassical Economics

Keynesianism

The Anthropocene

Darwin’s Legacy

Marx’s Legacy

Chapter 2. Gardening, Ground Squirrels, and the Crisis of Civilization

Chapter 3. How Veganism Can Help Save the World

Ecocentric Ecosocialism or Anthropocentric Ecosocialism?

Anthropocentrism and the Political Economy of Food

The Anthropocentric Culture and Treatment of Nonhuman Animals

How Do We Account for Our Complacency?

History of Food, Lifestyle Choices, and Emancipatory World Views

Chapter 4. On Bestiality (Zoophilia)

Chapter 5. On Michael Löwy’s Ecosocialism

Ecosocialism and Marx’s Theory

For a Humanist Ecology?

Questions of Policy

The problem of human overpopulation

The problem of preservation of ecological equilibrium

How to decide which economic/human activities to eliminate?

Degrowth

On Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle

Chapter 6. The Climate Movement Should Demand: Tax Greenhouse Gas Emissions with Subsidies for Low-Income People

For an Emission Tax with Subsidies to Low-Income People

The Climate Club

Emission Tariff and Climate Change Assistance Fund

Chapter 7. Reflections on Edward O. Wilson’s Sociobiology

My Intent and Focus

I. Sociobiology

On human nature

II. Criticism

Levins’s criticism of sociobiology

Lewontin’s criticism of sociobiology

III. My Reflection

Where are we going?

Chapter 8. On Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life

Moore’s Theory of Capitalism and Present-Day Crisis

Moore’s Revision of Historical Materialism

Contrasting Marx and Moore

Tensions in Moore’s Methodology and Theory

An Alternative Road Forward

The origin of alienation from nature

Chapter 9. Strategy and Tactics for the Climate Movement: A Critique of 350.org Break Free from Fossil Fuels Campaign

The Scope of the Problem: The Anthropocene

The Climate Movement Needs an Action Program

Strategy and Tactics: Lobbying And Civil Disobedience or Mass Action?

Mass Mobilization Strategy and Civil Disobedience

Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Climate Movement

Climate Tipping Points and the Road to Power

Conclusion

Chapter 10. How to Stop the Sixth Extinction: A Critical Assessment of E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth

Biodiversity and Why It Matters

Mass Extinctions of Species: A Rare Phenomenon

Causes of the Sixth Extinction

Hunter-Gatherers

The First Farmers and the Rise of Civilization

Capitalist Modernity

Wilson’s Proposal to Stop and Reverse the Sixth Extinction

How to Save Biodiversity and the World

Returning to wildness

Ethics of biodiversity

Transcending anthropocentric industrial capitalism

Chapter 11. Who Can Stop the Climate Crisis?

The Transition to a Post-Carbon Society Is Largely Political

The Climate and Ecology Movements Lag

Would the Democratic Party Do It?

Organizing from Below

Chapter 12. To Be or Not to Be: Ecocentric Ecological Socialism as the Solution to the World Social and Planetary Crises

Part 1. The Need for and Benefits of Fundamental Downsizing and Restructuring the Economies of the Global North

Restructuring, downsizing, and repurposing

Jobs for all

Lessons from the Cuban revolution

Part 2. The Road to the Working People’s Power and the Transitional Period

The State and the market

Regulation and taxation

Part 3. Do We Dare to Fail?

Chapter 13. Reformism or Radicalism: Which Strategy for the Climate Movement?

Some Recent Versions of the Reformist Thesis

Root Causes of the Climate Crisis

Reformism in American Politics

The ideological and social roots of reformism

Stalinism

The Road Forward

Chapter 14. The Crisis of Civilization and How to Resolve It: An Introduction to Ecocentric Socialism

What is a Civilization?

The Unintended Consequences of Civilization

The Crisis of the Capitalist Civilization

Alienation from Nature

Ecocentric Socialism

Chapter 15. Culture and Nature in The Epic of Gilgamesh

A Summary of the Epic

Culture and Nature in The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Sumerian Landscape

Ecocentrism of our forager ancestors

Continuity and Change

Lingering ecocentrism

An unfolding anthropocentrism

Attitude toward nature

Childhood Memories: Echoes from Gilgamesh Epic?

From Anthropocentrism to the Anthropocene

Chapter 16. Challenges Posed by the Green New Deal

Reality vs. Fantasy: The House Select-Committee

Reality vs. Fantasy: A Timely National Debate on Climate Change and a Green New Deal?

Climate Change Mitigation as Big Business

Chapter 17. A Future for American Capitalism or the Future of Life on Earth? An Ecosocialist Critique of the Green New Deal

Ocasio-Cortez and the Leftward Shift of the Millennials

The Sunrise Movement

Justice Democrats

Green New Deal and the Relative Decline of US Imperialism

The origins of the Green New Deal (GND)

The GND Resolution and the 2020 elections

The Ecocentric Socialist Response

How about class struggle?

Chapter 18. The COVID-19 Pandemic as the Crisis of Civilization

The Anthropogenic Causes of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Philosophical and Methodological Issues

Marx and ecology

The Ecocentric Socialist Approach

An ecological social theory of human nature

Humans as collective organisms

On historical agency

The crisis of civilization

The rise of infectious diseases

Chapter 19. The Case for Ecocentric Socialism

On Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism as a Pillar of Civilization

Bourgeois anthropocentrism

Management of Nature

Socialist anthropocentrism

Historical Materialism and Anthropocentrism

Theory and Practice of Ecocentric Socialism

Animistic ecological materialism

Key implications

Theory of history

Dismantling all power relations

For simplicity

For a culture of being and loving

Chapter 20. On Degrowth

Intellectual Sources of Degrowth

From Ideas to a Movement

Growth or Capitalism?

Macro-Level Changes

Society-Wide Strategies for Change

Conclusion

Chapter 21. The Labor Theory of Value and Exploitation of Nonhumans: The Case of the Meat Industry

Chapter 22. Was Marx an Ecosocialist?

Appendix 1. The Anthropocentric Industrial Capitalist Civilization and Ecological Crises

About the author

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of more than two decades of studying and discussing various problems of theory and politics related to natural and social sciences and humanities to develop a unified theory of society and nature to understand and respond to ecological crises, especially those that are existential, in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. I owe my progress to people too numerous to thank individually. Most of all, I am indebted to those whose contributions are evident in references and bibliography, especially authors whose contributions I critically analyze in order to develop Ecocentric Socialism as dialectics is most of all the development of ideas in such a process of critical appropriation.

In the initial phase around the years 1999 to 2000, I learned from two persons, an awareness of the problem of philosophical gaze as in critical theory and paradigm as well as in philosophy of science. Nuppy, a muscular, domineering white male cat with orange patches who came into my life in 1999, taught me that cats are persons too and must be similarly respected. This helped open my eyes, previously shut by anthropocentrism, to nonhuman animals and other species who are in fact our kin and must have equal right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and share as equals the bounty of Mother Earth denied to them by the colonization of the planet by the human species.

In 2000, on recommendation from a friend, I read Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (1992), a novel by Daniel Quinn, that tells the story of how the world has reached the recent critical juncture from the point of view of Ishmael, a gorilla. Starting with the story of his captivity, Ishmael explains how the gradual dominance of Takers’ culture that view human destiny as the rulers of the planet and eventually the universe driven by technological innovations has led to the current crises. In contrast, Ishmael speaks of the marginalized Leavers’ culture of simple living in harmony with the rest of nature as do nonhuman species. Subsequently, I read all of Quinn’s books and have been influenced by his celebration of the world as a magical place and his promotion of the Leavers’ worldview.

In 2007, I attended a two-part presentation by Craig Collins, at the time a professor of political science at California State University of California, East Bay, at Niebel-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland, California. Craig discussed the relationship of Marx’s theory and nature. I participated in the discussion that followed. Craig went on to develop his ideas and polish the slideshow and write a number of articles based on his view which I (re)published in Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. Soon afterwards, on invitation from Gus Bagakis, the organizer of these lectures, I presented my view of the origin of alienation from nature, that I argued began about 12,000 years ago when groups of hunter-gatherers took up farming, starting what has been called the Agricultural Revolution. Farming required domestication of plants and animals and the maintenance of the farm as an artificial ecosystem, all of which required alienation from nature and giving up ecocentrism of hunter-gatherers and adopting anthropocentrism, the ideological reflection of alienation from nature. I am grateful to Craig and Gus as well as others who participated in the discussion of my presentation.

In April 2009, I began publishing and editing Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism, a blog to keep a record of my readings relevant to ecosocialism if they were available in digital format and of my writings as I began to develop ideas leading to Ecocentric Socialism.

In the process of writing, I have benefited from contributions of others. In the earlier years, Robin Chang helped me with editing, and when he was in his doctoral program at York University, by assisting with literature search. Robin, who had studied philosophy, was helpful to me in the discussion of philosophical issues. Roozbeh Mostofi, a fellow socialist participant in the Iranian revolution of 1979, helped me edit some of my writings that are now included in the book. Teimour Zorofchi Benissi, a friend, activist, and co-thinker since we collaborated in the Iranian revolution of 1979 also helped me edit the Introduction and Chapters 21 and 22 and translated into Farsi the essay that appears as Chapter 15 of the book. Anthony Gabb of St. John’s University, who concurrently with me studied at the Department of Economics of the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, and a fellow socialist, reviewed and commented on the Introduction and Chapters 21 and 22 and engaged me in a long discussion of them. Over the course of two summers, in 2020 and 2021, Eric Holt-Gimenez, a former director of The Institute for Food and Development Policy, better known as Food First, and Leonor Hurtado, who live nearby, joined me at my house for potluck dinner as we sat on the patio enjoying northern California summer evenings and discussing social issues and ecological crises and sometimes my writings and ideas. I benefited from these discussions, especially from Eric’s criticism.

I am grateful to all of them for their contributions and encouragement.

A big thank you goes to Fred Murphy who edited a number of my long essays but also provided substantive improvements. Fred, whom I first met when he was a socialist journalist, attended the Graduate Faculty of New School for Social Research to study history, the past decade has co-moderated with Steve Knight two Facebook groups: Marxism, Science, the Anthropocene, and Extraction/Expulsions/Resistance. Fred generously called his editorial assistance unalienated labor.

I would also like to thank those who provided me with a venue to discuss aspects of Ecocentric Socialism. In 2013, I wrote a two-part essay that appears as Chapter 1 on the invitation of Sanjay Perera, the publisher and editor of the website Philosophers for Change based in Singapore. The essay that appears as Chapter 14 is the edited text of the lecture I delivered at the Revolutionary University Socialist Conference in Berkely in October 2018 on invitation from Kip Waldo, one of its organizers. I wrote the essay that is now Chapter 19 in response to a question I was asked in a Zoom presentation and discussion of Ecocentric Socialism organized by Farrokh Jafari and Ettehad-e Fadaian-e Komonist (Fadaian Communist Unity).

Parviz Sedaghat, the editor and publisher of the socialist website Naghd-e Eghtesad-e Siasi (Critique of the Political Economy) in Iran, has published multiple essays of mine on socialism and Ecocentric Socialism. Human Kassebi translated all of them except one. The We Animals channel on Telegram that works to stop mistreatment of animals and to promote veganism in Iran translated the essay that is now Chapter 3 into Farsi. Hassan Mortezavi, the translator of the most recent Farsi edition of Marx’s Capital, helped publish the essay that appears as Chapter 18 in Naghd (Critique), the other socialist website in Iran. Reza Shadman translated that essay. Dariush Nesari in Iran has created a Telegram channel to post the Farsi translations of my writings. The editors of The Bullet of the Socialist Project in Canada and the editors of Resilience of Post-Carbon Institute in Santa Rosa, California, republished some of my essays.

Others helped disseminate Ecocentric Socialism in other ways. Enrique Ortega of the University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, has integrated Ecocentric Socialism in his own theory of degrowth. Mohammad Safavi, a leading Iranian labor activist and an ecosocialist, has introduced Ecocentric Socialism to labor activists in Iran. Arash Kamangar interviewed me twice for the Farsi-language socialist Barabari (Equality) TV.

Finally, Fahimeh Gooran and Mehdi Gooran Savadkohi, who designed the book cover.

I am grateful to all of them.

Of course, I alone bear responsibility for the ideas expressed in this book and any errors of commission or omission.

Introduction

This book outlines Ecocentric Socialism as a theory of humanity embedded in nature to understand and help solve social and ecological crises of the twenty-first century, especially the existential crises of catastrophic climate change, the Sixth Extinction, recurring pandemics, and nuclear holocaust. Aside from the obvious cases, scientists in related fields have come to a consensus that these are anthropogenic (human-caused) crises. However, natural scientists do not delve into how and why humanity interact with nature in such pathological ways. In Appendix 1, I show how the rise in atmospheric concentration of the key greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is correlated with the advent of English capitalist industrialization (1760–1840) and the spread of industrialization globally, with concurrent exponential population growth, increasing the per capita production and consumption. Climate scientists agree that global warming and climate change are caused by the rapid increase in greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. The Golden Age of Capitalism from after World War II to early 1970s and the industrialization that has spread to other countries have accelerated ecological crises. Of course, the early industrializers that constitute the Global North have the largest responsibility for the existential crises, as I also show in Appendix 1. As stratigraphers have found evidence of human activity in rock formations, some geologists have named the post–World War II period the Anthropocene (the Human Epoch). The Anthropocene signals the phasing out of Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago, providing the agriculture-friendly climate that has made civilization possible in the last 5,000 years (Zalasiewicz and Williams 2012). Clearly, the social system which I call the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization for the reasons explained in the book contributes to the emergence and deepening of ecological crises—thus, the necessity of a unified theory of society and nature that exposes the root causes of these crises and provide us with the road map to end them.

Dominated by liberal bourgeois currents that have refused to consider whether and how the social system may be responsible for these crises, the environmentalist movement despite some successes has failed to stop the crises as they continue to spread and deepen. Take for example 350.org, the prominent climate group, whose leader, Bill McKibben, is the posterchild of the climate movement in the corporate media. 350.org designated the level of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere as reported to the US Congress by climate scientist James Hansen in 1988. As of this writing, carbon dioxide concentration stands above 417 ppm, 67 ppm more than in 1988. Yet, there is absolutely no discussion by McKibben and other 350.org leaders and activists and other climate groups about their failed strategy of trying to convince capitalist politicians. Criticism of the climate movement strategy and the suggestion that only the working people can overcome the crises through education and self-organization and self-mobilization, including this author (Chapters 6, 9, 11), have been ignored.

Thanks to Karl Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production, the socialist analysis of these crises has been richer as it ties environmental and ecological degradation to the dynamics of capitalist accumulation (for an early discussion, see Mandel 1977). However, the disastrous environmental record of the self-described socialist regimes, especially in the Soviet Union and more recently in China, has made it plain that overthrowing capitalism is insufficient for achieving and maintaining environmental and ecological health. Starting in the 1970s, some socialists have questioned aspects of Marx’s theory as ecologically unsound and have tried to amend and improve it in ways that are consistent with the well-being of the biosphere.

Whether these criticisms were based on valid readings of Marx became a controversy among some socialists and ecosocialists. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a few authors whose books have been published by Monthly Review Press (hereon, the Monthly Review authors) have provided a new reading of Marx. While initially it was argued that Marx had ecological insights (Burkett 1999; Foster 2000), more recently, it is suggested that Marx was in fact an ecologist and ecosocialist (Saito 2017).

While I consider their contributions valuable for a better understanding of Marx’s intellectual development and initially supported the focus on Marx’s notion of metabolic rift, I have considerable reservation about this. In Chapter 22, I have outlined these with a focus on Saito’s contribution which is generally agreed as a more developed form of a Monthly Review authors’ argument.

In addition, I consider any reconstruction of Marx’s theory of necessity as more of a theoretical development by its author(s) than what Marx really said. This must be clear from a century and half of debate on various aspects of Marx’s theoretical contributions. Aren’t there multiple interpretations of historical materialism, labor theory of value, theory of the proletariat, and of socialism, to name a few of the most important? There are even many more interpretations of Marxism, a label that, according to Engels, Marx opposed. The responsibility for turning Marx’s contributions into a doctrine and to open the door to a cult of Marx belongs to Karl Kaustky. By cult of Marx, I mean the tendency to explicitly or implicitly deny that Marx was a nineteenth-century revolutionary socialist intellectual giant, yet still a historical figure who could be a great teacher but cannot be used to explain multiple social and ecological concerns that humanity faces in the twenty-first century—thus, the propensity of the majority of socialist and ecosocialist intellectuals and political currents to claim that they represent the continuity with Marx as the label Marxism imply. In this book, where I use the words Marxism and Marxist, it is to denote someone else’s use of them rather than implying a clear intellectual or political current or what Marx really said!

Ecocentric Socialism radically differs from the two ecosocialist approaches discussed above: piecemeal criticism of Marx and attempting to amend his theory to develop ecosocialist theory and the rereading of Marx to argue that he has been misunderstood for a century and half and that he is a founding ecologist and a profound ecosocialist. Instead, I focus attention on the philosophical and methodological make up of Marx’s theories. I will argue how and why Marx’s theory of society and history, historical materialism, and its application to the critique of political economy and the capitalist mode of production, the labor theory of value, are quite consciously anthropocentric in their construction and leave nature aside to focus on the dynamics of class societies, in particular, capitalist societies. As such, Marxian theory by design is not an integrated theory of society and nature despite Monthly Review authors’ claims. Piecemeal modifications of Marx’s theory also remain dualistic and anthropocentric.

But why is a focus on anthropocentrism essential to ecosocialist theorizing? Consider the development of the feminist movement and theory and how they could not have evolved to maturity without taking on androcentrism, the propensity to center society around men and men’s needs, priorities, and values and to relegate women to the periphery (Lerner 1986, pp. 12-13, 15, 36). As I document it throughout the book, in particular in Chapters 2, 15, and 19, anthropocentrism has been the bedrock of civilization for 5,000 years and present in religious and secular forms, including in socialist theories. Even Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution dethroned humans as the apex of creation, was anthropocentric. Science and technology have also been developed largely to dominate and control nature for human purpose. So, the common vision among socialists and ecosocialists that humanity will manage nature to maintain ecological balance is anthropocentric. Thus, to understand how, when, and why anthropocentrism arose and its pervasiveness as an ideological pillar of the civilization for the past 5,000 years is absolutely necessary for ecosocialist theorizing.

The year 1845 proved a critical juncture for Marx’s and Engels’s theoretical development. In his Theses on Feuerbach (1845), Marx contrasts his materialism in opposition to Feuerbach’s. Criticizing Feuerbach’s philosophical anthropology, Marx proposes his own: [T]he human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations (ibid.). He then contrasts his materialism with those of political economists and liberal philosophers: The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity (ibid.). Let me stress that Marx clearly limits human nature to the ensemble of the social relations. Nothing about human physical being and natural environment is considered. Also, Marx’s materialism in the construction of historical materialism is similarly focused on social humanity.

In the construction of historical materialism in The German Ideology (1845), Marx and Engels relied on Marx’s view of human nature and materialism in Theses on Feuerbach. They themselves explicitly acknowledged the shortcoming of their approach:

Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself—geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men (ibid. my emphasis).

The focus on humans to the exclusion of nonhumans is also clear in Marx’s labor theory of value. As I demonstrate in Chapter 21, Marx’s theory of surplus value focuses attention on the exploitation of wage workers in the capitalist mode of production, abstracting from exploitation of nonhumans that also contribute to the creation of surplus value. That is, surplus value is in fact produced in part through exploitation of nonhuman nature, which has not been noticed or has simply been ignored by Marxists. The political implication of this finding is tremendous. The proletariat in Marx’s theory of socialism is the universal class which emancipates humanity as it emancipates itself. If my argument is correct, the proletariat will not be liberated unless the nonhuman nature which is also subordinated and exploited in all class societies is liberated as well. Yet, there are no Marxists currents that have made nonhuman liberation a part of their theories and political program. The problem of exclusion of nature in Marx’s theory history and society has been noticed earlier. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School sought to conceptually integrate society and nature in the Marxian theory, relying on philosophy (Jay 1973/1996, Chapter VIII). Perry Anderson (1983) followed up with his critical review of historical materialism. Ted Benton (1993) focused attention on animal rights, and Jason W. Moore (2017) attempted, in my opinion unsuccessfully (Chapter 8), to theoretically integrate society and nature. Thus, the dualism between society and nature remains in the socialist and ecosocialist theorizing.

It is well known that beginning in 1845, Marx increasingly replaced philosophy with science. Thus, I do not find it surprising that Monthly Review authors find ecological insights in Marx’s writings as he pursued learning and incorporating natural sciences into his own view of the world. However, there is no indication that Marx and Engels ever developed their historical materialism as an integrated theory of society and nature necessary for ecosocialist theorizing. The reason is obvious: the required fund of knowledge for such theorizing have only come together since the middle of the twentieth century, mostly in biology, archeology, and anthropology.

The theory of Ecocentric Socialism outlined in this book is my attempt to follow Marx’s and Engels’s advice in The German Ideology to use the latest in the development in sciences to provide an integrated theory of society and history that is adequate for understanding the systemic existential ecological crises of the twenty-first century. Some of its key features are as follows:

•An ecological theory of human nature . Thanks to recent discoveries about the microbiome, we now know that humans are collective organisms that have been co-evolving with microbial communities, trillions of bacteria, viruses, yeasts, protozoa, and fungi. The microbiome affects our gut, which affects our brain. Also, the brain affects our gut, which affects our microbiome. Disruptions to the gut microbiome, say by infection or a change in diet, can trigger reactions in the body that may affect psychological, behavioral, and neurological health. In brief, who we are and how we think and feel and behave, is partly the result of the dynamic interactions between human cells and bacteria, viruses, yeasts, protozoa, and fungi that live as part of us.

•A much longer view of history which places society in its natural context. This new knowledge about our ecological nature must be placed in the context of the dynamics of the following trends: (1) The geophysical trend which recognizes that life emerged from non-life 3.7 billion years ago and that we are an earthbound, oxygen-breathing, energy-using species dependent upon our physical environment—especially the atmosphere, soil, and temperature range remaining compatible with human life, (2) the evolutionary transhistorical trend which recognizes and celebrates our continuity with other animals, (3) the evolutionary trend cumulating in the genus Homo going back 2.5 million years and the emergence of Homo sapiens at least 300,000 years ago, and (4) the recent historical development since the rise of farming 12,000 years ago and class societies (civilization) about 5,000 years ago.

•Animistic materialism . The Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed in tandem with commercialization of the world and later with the rise of the capitalist mode of production effectively suppressed animistic views of nature prevalent across the world in favor of a mechanical view of nature. This included even the science of ecology. As a Native American and a professional biologist, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2023, p. 331, emphasis added) has put it this way: The ecosystem is not a machine, but a community of beings, subjects rather than objects. What if those beings were the drivers? In socialist and ecosocialist theories also, despite allusions to dialectics of nature, humanity is the sole subject in history. Animistic materialism and its philosophic gaze, that I call ecocentrism, gives agency to all animate and inanimate beings as manifested in their interrelationship. Ecocentric Socialism is built on animistic materialism. Whereas socialist and ecosocialist theories by and large are based on the Western scientific approach to nature, Ecocentric Socialism shares animistic views of nature with hunter-gatherers and Indigenous Peoples of the world that are surprisingly much closer to what we know about the natural world and our place in it since Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the current knowledge of what makes us human. The difference is fundamental, in that, the anthropocentric socialist and ecosocialist theories and policy proposals generally share the idea of a sustainable society where the socialist humanity will manage ecosystems wisely. In animistic views of nature, humanity can never become managers of nature, and attempts to do so on a large scale will create ecological crises as we know from 5,000 years of civilization. Instead, humanity must live in nature left to its own devices if we want it to thrive. All animistic views of nature, including Ecocentric Socialism, begin from love for and adoration of Mother Nature and all its offspring as our kin.

•A historical theory of alienation . Like Marx’s theory of socialism, Ecocentric Socialism is a theory of human emancipation from all forms of alienation. However, it also provides a historical theory of anthropocentrism as the ideological manifestation of alienation from nature that begins with the rise of farming about 12,000 years ago.

•Ecocentrism as environmental ethics . The Marxian theory and theories of socialism and ecosocialism lack any environmental ethics flowing from their constitution. If they include any form of environmental ethics, it is an ad hoc addition. Ecocentric Socialism is built on the foundation of animistic materialism, and ecocentrism is its environmental ethics.

•An interdependent theory of socialist and cultural revolutions . Ecocentric Socialism builds on the mode of production theory for the period since the rise of farming and civilization. However, it focuses attention on both ecological and social (hereon, ecosocial) forces and relations of production. Its social agencies, action program, and the theory of transition also differ from those of Marxian socialism in important ways. Ecocentric Socialism is an interdependent socialist and cultural revolution; neither can develop without the other.

•A paradigm shift. In summation, Ecocentric Socialism presents a new philosophic gaze and a paradigm shift compared to the existing socialist and ecosocialist theories.

The book presents the development of Ecocentric Socialism chronologically in successive chapters, but in all cases, the development of the theory is paired with policies flowing from it on a variety of issues and in different contexts. These include my discussions of climate crisis, the Sixth Extinction, and the COVID-19 pandemic (see Nayeri August 2, 2015, for my discussion of nuclear holocaust). There are also chapters dealing with questions of social forces to develop Ecocentric Socialism as well as strategy and tactics, and an action program for Ecocentric Socialist transformation in the United States. The reader will notice the continuity of these with the revolutionary socialist tradition going back to Marx and Engels as well as new approaches to these questions.

The chapters in this book originally appeared in Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism which I have published and edited since 2009. I have edited the selected essays to eliminate repetition and to make them as short as possible. I have also updated, when possible, the information and data used in these essays as they have been written over a nine-year period, between 2013 and 2022. I have kept the chronological order of the chapters instead of organizing them in any other way, such as by topic, to show the evolution of my thinking. The reader may notice some degree of incongruencies as I developed the theory over time. In all case, the latter views supersede the earlier ones. Still, each chapter is fairly self-contained but the latter chapters assume and may give reference to the materials in earlier chapters.

I wrote the essays included in this book first and foremost for self-clarification but also as a contribution to the discussion in climate change (Chapters 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17) and ecosocialist (Chapters 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21) groups I have participated in. These determined the extent to which I detail or condense my argument and the tone of presentation.

While, in my view, Ecocentric Socialism offers the best integrated theory of society and nature at this time for the reasons offered above and are detailed in the book, by no means I see it as complete and definitive. Transcending the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization toward an ecological socialist future will require self-organization and self-mobilization of billions of people. This will require mass radicalization and elevation of mass consciousness through education gained by reading, conversation, and collective action. It will also lead to the development of superior theories.

As a socialist activist since 1971 and a participant in the Iranian 1979 revolution, I know that given enough time, the working people will radicalize and have the potential to affect radical ecocentric social change. However, as a realist, I know the existential crises have narrowed the window of opportunity to resolve these crises so the threat of possible extinction. Yet, humanity has no choice but to try and hope for success.

April 19, 2023

Sebastopol, California

CHAPTER 1

Economics, Socialism, and Ecology: A Critical Outline

In this opening chapter, I will critically consider the utility and scope of the bourgeois and socialist views of human society, in particular capitalism, as these are important for consideration of ecological crises. The bourgeois view is concisely represented in economics as Homo economicus (economic human) which forms the basis of the economic theory of the capitalist society. This view was decisively challenged by Karl Marx’s theory of society and history. For Marx, the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. Marx held that it is the ensemble of the social relations formed by the dominant mode of