Capitalism as Ecology and the Anthropocene

A friend of mine posted this article on Facebook called "Is Capitalism an Ecological System?" about a recent book by philosopher Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. I thought it was relevant to some of the discussions we've been having in class, so I thought I would share it.

As the article delineates, Moore's book proposes that rather than understanding 'capitalism' as an ideology, political formation or economic structure, it should be conceived of as a "a way of organizing nature".

I haven't read the book, but the article goes on to say that by considering capitalism a system for organizing nature, Moore concludes that, "Nature can neither be saved nor destroyed, only transformed.”

Following this, the author of the article somewhat hopefully asserts, "If we accept that nature is not a timeless background to capitalism, but instead that “historical natures” are produced by and products of modes of production, then it becomes increasingly clear that historical natures and their reproduction are not incidental to accumulation. Natures are the condition of its possibility."

Besides the fact that I find it quite surprising that this author seems to imply Moore's book is responsible for the revelation that capitalism has had a significant impact on "the environment", or that nature holds potential for possibility,  it is this concept of "historical nature" that is closely related to, if not essentially synonymous with (on a smaller, less encompassing scale), the anthropocene, and which I would like to draw out.

I have several thoughts on this terminology, 'historical nature'. For starters, it imposes a fallacious division between history and nature, demonstrating that Moore's theory is fundamentally anthropocentric (at least as far as I am able to glean from the article's short summary), predicated as it is on the longstanding dichotomy between human/nature or human/environment and whole litany of related binary opposites such as civilization/nature, subject/object, progress/nature etc. etc. ad infinitum. I found last week's Whitehead readings helpfully disrupted this longstanding dichotomy by employing terms such as "human animals". Unfortunately, Moore's theory does not share this ethos and as such it does not productively account for humans as an integral part of 'nature/the environment', destructive in many/most manifestations though they have been.

Despite the theory's shortcomings, I find thinking of capitalism as an ecology is helpful.  There is something about Moore's notion that capitalism is able to exert mastery over 'nature' to such an extent that it is able to organize that seems wrong to me. I think what many conceive of as a strict opposition is actually an ongoing process of negotiation, think, for instance, of a tree that that has grown around a telephone line. Nature and capitalism are not separate entities, they are intimately intertwined, and always already interacting.

To write or think that the relation between capitalism and nature is unilateral or weighted in such a way that the former is actually able to systematically control the latter seems nonsensical to me. But the concept of capitalism as an ecology, as a nexus of relations that is inextricable from the organization of nature, not responsible for it, that I think is a less anthropocentric and more potentially fruitful (no pun intended...okay maybe a little) way to think about how to move toward a more mutually beneficial negotiation.