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Anthropocene, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature History and the Crisis of Capitalism Edited by Jason W Moore (2016), Artist and painter Mike Caimbeul, “Cheap Nature”, Capitalocene, Humans and the web of Life, Jason W Moore, Man and Nature, Rise of Capitalism
The Web of Life Reshaped – Painting by Mike Caimbeul
Photo Credit: Bongdoogle.com
Part Two of my series on the book, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Kairos Books, 2016), edited by Jason W. Moore, is a synopsis of Moore’s article on “The Rise of Cheap Nature.” In his article, he refers to two kinds of nature: nature with a common ‘n’ is the web of life; Nature with a capital ‘N’ is environments without humans.
Like Eileen Crist (Part One), Moore argues that we live in the “Age of Capital,” the Capitalocene. Until we understand that “capital and power do not act upon nature, but develop through the web of life,” we cannot formulate solutions for the environmental crises we now face.
Most people (myself included), Moore notes, still think about capitalism in economic terms – markets, prices, money, and the like. He proposes that we think about the rise of capitalism as a new way of organizing nature. We would start to consider capitalism not as world-economy but as world-ecology – the organization of work, re/production of nature, and the conditions of life as an organic whole for the accumulation of capital and pursuit of power. In other words, human activity is environmental-making.
Moore challenges the Anthropocene narrative that capitalism emerged in eighteenth-century England with the Industrial Revolution, powered by coal and steam. The focus on fossil fuels as the ignition for the growth of capital ignores the greatest landscape revolution in human history – in terms of speed, scale, and scope – that occurred in the three centuries after 1450.
The conquest of the Atlantic and appropriation of the New World brought vast expanses of “Cheap Nature” and the labor-power to create wealth. “Cheap” refers to the unpaid work/energy of organic life. Numbered among Cheap Nature – along with trees, soils, and rivers – were indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, nearly all women, and even white-skinned men (Slavs, Jews, Irish) living in semi-colonial regions. These humans, deemed not Human, provided Cheap Labor.
By 1500, Spain alone had colonized an area greater than the whole of Europe and more than 25 million indigenous peoples. Sugar, the modern world’s original cash crop, fed on the work/energy of African slaves. Sugar production devoured forests and exhausted soils. Between 1570 and 1640, Brazilian sugar grew three percent every year. In northeastern Brazil at the height of the sugar boom in the 1650s, twelve thousand hectares of forest were cleared in a single year, as compared with 200 years in twelfth-century Europe.
Scientific advances made it possible to put the whole of nature to work for capital. “Science” revealed nature’s secrets for capital accumulation. “Economy” channeled the labor-power of the landless proletariat into the cash nexus of the labor market. The “state” enforced the cash nexus.
To maintain expanding commodity production required cheap, productive labor; cheap food to control the price of labor-power; cheap raw materials; and cheap energy for diverse industries. Fossil fuels, seemingly unlimited supplies of Cheap Nature, were put to work for the rapid expansion of capitalism.
Though rising costs of fossil fuel production and labor costs have shrunk sources of Cheap Nature and Cheap Labor, capitalism has managed to keep ahead with Cheap Nature strategies within reach of its power. (I think of low cost labor of America’s private prison population and the expanding gig economy.)
Moore concludes that financialization and extreme inequality are predictable results of the end of Cheap Nature. The web of life can no longer sustain capitalism’s world-ecology. Our strategies for liberation must not only determine how to redistribute wealth, but also “how to remake our place in nature in a way that promises emancipation for all life.”
Three Worlds One Vision 
Wonderful post, dear Rosaliene! Very encouraging for our time! Thank you!
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Thanks, Maria 🙂
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Essentially, capitalism is based on exploitation. That was sustainable for a period of time because we had not yet reached the environmental limits of the planet. When we cut down all the marketable trees in Europe, we discovered America and did the same thing there. There were always new lands and peoples to exploit. But, that is no longer the case. Capitalism is maxed-out. There’s nothing substantial left to exploit, and we’re struggling to find a different socioeconomic way before time runs out.
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That’s Moore’s argument in a nutshell, Robert. Transitioning to more sustainable forms of energy will not solve our environmental crises. As you say, we have to find a different way of organizing our lives. I do believe we also need to change our entire system of human labor and production.
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I agree.
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Rosaliene, thanks for your summaries of Anthropocene or Capitalocene?. If I understand correctly… “cheap nature,” people included, was a precursor to capitalism. Exploitation (rather than merit) seems to explain most Big Bucks capitalism. Innovation? Maybe. Using prisoners for cheap labor was somebody’s “innovative” idea. 😦
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Rosaliene,
I’m concurrently reading “The Communist Manifesto” (1848) and “The Land Grabbers” (2014). Marx and Engels claim that most cultures, from Ireland to India, began with small, communal villages in which property was held in common, and the entire population participated in decisions. In “The Land Grabbers”, I’m discovering there are many but fast-disappearing cultures who have operated just this way through the centuries, living off the land, sharing it and acting as stewards rather than owners. They are being displaced by development by foreigners, colluding with governments, through property concessions. They are losing land rights and habitat to timbering, mechanized farming, and even “fortress conservation” measures designed to evict indigenous, nomadic people from land they held without clear paperwork for centuries.
Point is that communal land holdings have a long history and continue, but are increasingly threatened by our modern ideas of property.
While you mention the “cheap” factors involved in colonization of the Americas, you don’t mention the “cheap money” that has turned the river into a flood in recent history. Let’s not forget that all this eco-destruction is paid by debt. Borrowing against the future to pay for “cheap thrills” in the present does not bode well.
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Katharine, thanks for adding your voice. Moore noted in his article that the peasantry’s loss of access to arable and grazing land (1315-1453) played an important role in the rise of capitalism. I look forward to reading your post on “The Land Grabbers.”
Moore’s article is focused on the rise of capitalism. For that reason, no mention is made of recent history. I agree that our current eco-destruction is being paid by debt. Our legacy will be a burden to future generations that they may never recover from.
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Rosaliene,
Your articles make me think of related issues, so I do tend to go off track, sometimes. Thank you for being patient.
I believe financial debt may be obliterated a lot easier and faster than debt to the environment in terms of pollution, de-forestation, and other destructiveness in the name of short term profits. However, it occurs to me that the earth is patient. She can shrug her shoulders and shake off the vermin if they become too obnoxious.
I’ve almost finished “The Land Grabbers” and will make a special point of synopsizing it for you.
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“The earth is patient.” We-humans, with our short life span, forget that Earth’s web of life evolved over billions of years and, for as long as our sun burns bright, will continue to evolve and shake off obnoxious vermin (to paraphrase your words) that threatens Life.
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Yep. It’s up to us to decide whether we are “vermin” or not, both individually and collectively.
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“If I understand correctly… “cheap nature,” people included, was a precursor to capitalism.”
~ Moore argues that its not the precursor but its birth as a new way of organizing nature. Abundant and “Cheap” fossil fuels led to its explosion worldwide. We cannot forget that the power of the “State” was also successfully deployed to crush its rivals, socialism and communism.
~ IMO, in finally capturing control of the US government, the Masters of Capitalism are now free to remove all environmental, financial, and other government regulations that increase their labor and production costs.
~ Capitalism as an integral part of the web of life has thus become an insatiable beast that’s devouring Life itself.
The mention of prisoners as cheap labor was my comment, not Moore’s. In modern times, what’s innovative about low to unpaid prison labor is the privatization of prisons, the school-to-prison pipeline, and subsequent mass incarceration, especially of black and brown humans.
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Reblogged this on Guyanese Online.
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Thanks for the re-blog, Cyril. Have a great week 🙂
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The real trouble will start when Mother Nature gets really fed up with the dreadful treatment she has received over the centuries and starts to bite back in ways we haven’t even dreamed of yet. Superbugs, as we call the antibiotic resistant viruses, May just be the beginning. Excellent post, by the way, thank you.
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The possibilities are indeed unfathomable.
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Not even our guns – valued greater than the lives of our children – would be able to save us.
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Thanks, John. Mother Nature is already fighting back with extreme weather. The plastics we are dumping in our oceans are already coming back to us up through the food chain. As you mention, superbugs could also take millions of lives worldwide. Who knows how the web of life, as we know it, would respond as the mass extinction of species continues? Would it be able to sustain a voracious, brutal species like Homo sapiens?
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As Winston Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” I suppose we can substitute “Capitalism” for Democracy and arrive at a similar conclusion. Is Communism ever true to its ideals and tenets? Haven’t Communist governments always had a “ruling class” who exploited workers, all in the name of social equality?
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Ken, your point is valid. Humanity’s historical record is dismal. The “ruling class” usually falls victim to its own rights, privileges, and excesses. Moore’s argument that we live in a “world-ecology” built on nature (the web of life) and the unpaid and low-paid labor of women, and black and brown-skinned peoples offers us a different narrative for addressing all forms of inequality and formulating different systems for organizing human societies. I don’t have the answers. Think we must.
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Exactly ; human nature rules and the flaw of ideology is perfectly pointed out by George Orwell in ‘Animal Farm’.
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So we know that social paradigms and ideologies don’t produce the intended results… where to now, brown cow? If “civilization” is looking down an ever-widening bottomless black hole which was created by all those paradigms and ideologies that haven’t, well… worked, or worked as well as we expected… should we not dare put our supposed great minds together and bootstrap ourselves out of this mess with new and truly revolutionary ideas on interrelationships, from individuals to nations, races, species and gender? Or do we continue to think that if it was good enough for gramps, it’s good enough for me if I just tinker with the old Model T a bit?
You can take all of man’s problems, put them in one big super heavy-duty garbage bag and label the contents: failed relationships. Haul it out to the curb for garbage pick up and never, ever, refer to the contents again.
That totally revolutionary idea is, turf everything we’ve known that passes for relationships and start from scratch. The foundation, or base, you would discover, has to be compassion – bare naked compassion, nothing else added, especially NOT love, that’s been man’s greatest failure! As long as people of all shape, sizes, colours and IQ keep pushing the ersatz quality of love as their modus operandi; as long as they keep worshipping that sacred cow, that’s how long they will keep staring at that growing black hole.
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Pingback: How the web of life became Cheap Nature
Thanks for sharing, GuyFrog. Have a great week 🙂
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The cheap consumption of nature reminds me of the phrase, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The bill may be late, but it always comes due. Thanks, Rosaliene.
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It sure does, Dr. Stein. And it’s a monstrously expensive bill that we’re passing on to future generations.
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I agree.
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Another excellent post Rosaliene, and we’re currently in a state where the explotation of the poor and our natural resources are being revitalized and going full steam ahead.
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Reminds me of the book Natural Capitalism by Amory Lovins. My sister in law made the quip to me… how can anything be natural about Captialism? intriguing thought here Rosalienne… thanks.
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I agree with your sister-in-law, Bruce. Thanks for dropping by 🙂
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I really like his analysis – capitalism has always brutally exploited nature as viciously as it does human beings. Thanks for posting this.
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So do I, Dr. Bramhall. Moore’s analysis also makes it clear that we have much more work ahead than ending our use of fossil fuels.
Have you noticed the way technology firms are using “apps” to monetize our lives even more? We now have an app for finding people nearby to pick up our dog poop when we’re out walking our dog.
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There’s no way around, we need a new way of living, a new way of thinking, and acting.
In my opinion it will not be easy, to re-educate billions of people to change their old ways, and it’s very likely Mother Nature will teach us a lesson the hard way. since it seems now, it will be the only way for us to understand, and stop doing what we do.
I know there’s many new options an alternatives, that could bring change, but what they lack it’s their social, and economical sex appeal, in other words, they wouldn’t make our rich plutocrats, more rich.
And since our plutocrats are in fact the power behind our governments, we need a social change at all cost!
People need to be sufficiently weary, fed up, an alarmed to drop the TV remote control, get up of their comfortable sofa, and start being active politically speaking, boycotting, not buying, whatever it’s not kosher for Nature and the environment, start thinking they can survive going to work on public transportation, instead of owning several cars, and no buying a hybrid car, it’s not enough, cut dramatically their consumption of meat, and above all voting with their wallets, and finding a new economy system, not base on being a ‘consumer’ as people are called now day by the media, before Mother Nature teach us a hard lesson, and decide to cut us on half, or worst!
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Burning Heart, thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts. I agree with you on all the points raised. We definitely need “a new way of living, a new way of thinking, and acting.” Time is running out. We need to change real fast!
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The problem with immediate change is, it has no immediate upside. People want instant better. They want the “strong man” to drain the swamp while not having the least clue what “the swamp” actually contains, nor where it might be. In the last 100 years the modern world went from “instant” to “immediate” to “I want it yesterday.” Many serious virtues have bit the dust in these times, patience and courage certainly being the greatest losers. We’re in for another one of those natural rides such as mentioned in the ancient world stories of a cataclysmic global flood. What is going to happen on planet earth within the next 300 years is no longer preventable, nor avoidable. Affluenza has already begun decimating large parts of the planet and its denizens. There is no “flu shot” against that and even if there was, few would want to take it. Who doesn’t dream of becoming rich or at the very least, be certain of immediate comfort for self and immediate loved ones? Who really cares about the millions of dispossessed and enslaved who make riches or survivalist resources available? If there is one word that perfectly describes the reason for the end of civilization as we know it, that would be: injustice. I’m convinced there is no silver lining on the man-made social and ecological cloud.
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Sha’Tara, all that you say may be true for the minority of the world’s population who live in affluence. Indigenous peoples here in the USA and worldwide are leading the way towards a different relationship with Mother Earth. We can join them or we can declare defeat. If we are to end injustice, we must begin with ourselves and the institutions of which we are a part.
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Your thought-provoking post reminded me of a chapter I recently read in “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013).
Capitalism views all life from the superficial perspective of commodification – how can we exploit it for momentary gain and control. Kimmerer and many others argue that Indigenous cultures viewed all of nature as alive. “To be native to a place one must learn to speak its language.” For example, water is not a “thing,” but rather a being that is alive with ever transfomative potential.
Kimmerer describes how Indigenous languages portrayed this. Water, like other aspects of nature, is not a noun. it’s a verb. She uses an example. The Anishinaabe word, “puhpowee” used to refer to mushrooms, means “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight” (p. 49).
It’s a completely different worldview that is not easy to translate. The best I can do is relate an experience I had on a plane flying over the Rocky Mountains. I was sitting next to a man who claimed to be a former republican ambassador to a number of different nations. “Look at those mountains,” he said as he gazed out the window. “Imagine how much gold and silver there is beneath all those trees.” That wasn’t what came to my mind as I looked below at the wondrous forest life below, but I had no idea how to describe what I saw in a way that would be understood.
How does one raise the awareness of concrete (capitalist) thinkers? That’s a question I continue to ponder as I experiment with different methods for teaching. 🙂
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Carol, thanks for dropping by and sharing your perspective. I find it intriguing the way language reveals our relationship with our world. Water is life. It makes sense that we-humans should regard it as “a being that is alive.” The same is true for the air that we breathe and much more. We have monetized our lives in such a way that even “time is money.”
These series of articles are my way of getting readers to re-think our reality and place in nature.
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if only leaders
had been wise
& followers, wiser!
living in harmony
with nature,
valuing it’s gifts
and protecting it
so that life could go on;
a dream, unrealized 🙂
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If only, David. We-humans have been shortsighted.
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I do not believe capitalism has appeared on the scene in recent human history . There has always been a pyramid of wealth , earlier it was called survival of the fittest and is a direct consequence of our tribal nature. This nature is dressed in suits and ties now and the new tribes are nations. In western democracies we have accumulated great wealth and the top 1% of 7.5billion is 75 million people. Most of these live in the rich western democracies with a very high standard of living. I’m in the top 2% yet in the UK where I live I’m below the poverty line.
Each nation has its own wealth pyramid and here in the UK we have those who sleep in the street, while some bankers earn six figure salaries.
In India 20million people have to defecate outside as there are no toilets for them to use, yet there is much evidence of enormous wealth in that country.
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Thanks for dropping by, Kertsen, and sharing your thoughts. Growing inequality has become a global phenomenon that we-humans have to address.
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I’d like to address that problem but there doesn’t seem to be an address… just being flippant. Sometimes a little humour puts a new perspective on things.
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This is a great post! It gives me another way to view what I already know – if that makes any sense.
Thanks, Rosaliene!
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Thanks, Claire. It makes sense. Moore’s article helps us to better understand the mechanisms of our take-over and use of nature for the enrichment of a few (capital accumulation).
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