World accumulation and planetary life, or, why capitalism will not survive until the 'last tree is cut3

摘要

How does capitalism work through the web of life? How can we begin to understand capitalism not simply as an economic system of markets and production and a social system of class and culture, but as a way of organising nature? I've argued that this is a co-produced relation, that capitalism makes nature and the web of life makes capitalism. But how do we come to terms with planetary 'state shifts' like climate change - dramatic, abrupt, and irreversible moments of planetary change?1 That is, how do we understand the tendency towards both planetary crisis and accumulation crisis as two moments of a self-forming whole. We have an immediate problem because the way of thinking about these questions in the modern world, after five centuries of colonialism and scientific revolution and everything else, puts society in one box and nature in another. They interact - sort of - but they are very much in different spheres. The answer to these fundamental questions has to begin by acknowledging mat the planetary state shift recognised by earth system scientists requires an intellectual and political state shift: a radical shift in how we think about the relations between humans and the rest of nature.