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Our Capitalogenic World: Climate Crises, Class Politics and the Civilizing Project
Studia Poetica 11 (2023)
  • Jason W. Moore, Binghamton University--SUNY
Abstract
We live in times of anthropogenic climate crisis. Or do we? This essay shows how “humanity” is a thoroughly modern fetish, forged in the bloodbath of militarized accumulation and conquest after 1492. To say the the Anthropos drives the climate crisis implicates a historical actor that does not exist. But the reality is different. Humanity does nothing. Specific groups of humans make history – empires, classes, religious institutions, armies, financiers. This essay reveals the Anthropocene as more than lousy history – although the flight from world history is crucial. It argues that today’s Anthropocene is one pillar of the Environmentalism of the Rich. It is rooted historically in the Civilizing Project, and more recently, in post-1970 “Spaceship Earth” environmentalism. Both Environmentalism and its recent Anthropocene craze have sought to do one thing above all: deflect blame from capitalism as the prime mover of climate crisis. From the beginning, Environmentalism avoided “naming the system.” Only by identifying the climate crisis as capitalogenic – “made by humans” – can we begin to forge an effective socialist politics of climate justice.

Keywords
  • World-Ecology,
  • Capitalism,
  • Climate,
  • Environmentalism,
  • Environmental History,
  • Historical Materialism
Publication Date
Summer July, 2023
Citation Information
Jason W. Moore. "Our Capitalogenic World: Climate Crises, Class Politics and the Civilizing Project" Studia Poetica 11 Vol. 11 (2023) p. 97 - 122 ISSN: 2353–4583
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jasonwmoore/11/
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC International License.