3685. The U.S./Israeli War Against Iran and The Future of Life on Earth

 By Kamran Nayeri, March 16, 2026

A neighborhood in Tehran after U.S./Israeli bombings. Photo credit: The New York Times

“In our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital, not a single communist party can establish its program by proceeding solely or mainly from conditions and tendencies of developments in its own country.” Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin. 1928.

When I first read this passage in 1972, it resonated with me for two reasons: I realized how deeply modern human society is interconnected within the capitalist world economy, and because I understood why Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution is revolutionary and Stalin’s theory of “socialism in one country” was counterrevolutionary.

Years later, I learned that the theory of finance capital (imperialism) of Hilferding on the basis of which Bukharin and Lenin theories of imperialism are constructed to explain the origins of World War I was a mistaken break with Marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production, which has important ramifications for understanding the nature of capitalism (Nayeri 2023B, Chapter 4), hence what would be needed to transcend it to reach socialism (Nayeri, 2025, Chapter Six). Since 2009, I have learned that human society itself is deeply embedded in and depends on the web of life. This would require us to develop new theories of capitalism and socialism grounded in an integrated theory of society and nature. I have developed  Ecocentric Socialism as such a theory (Nayeri, 2023A; Chapter 19).

This essay provides a different framework for understanding the war Israel and the U.S. have launched against Iran on February 28, 2026, not just from the mainstream analyses but also from what is presented by much of the Left.

The war must be opposed not just because it is unjust, illegal, and disruptive of the capitalist world economy, and has been causing untold number of working people in Iran and the Middle East misery or that it is a Zionist and imperialist war against Iran, but because it is yet another facet of the crisis of anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization of which the U.S., Israel, and Iran are all integral parts and it that it has and will have vast adverse implication for the future of life in in the region and in the world.

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The essay further develops the analyses presented in two more recent writings. In “The Dead End of U.S./Israeli War Against Iran (Nayeri, June 22, 2025),” I analyzed the 12-day war that Israel started on June 13, 2025, to argue that the actual goal of Israel's and the U.S. 's war was to reverse the gains of the 1979 Iranian revolution. That revolution overthrew the U.S.-installed regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah), which had become increasingly dictatorial and despised by the millions of Iranian people. The Shah’s regime was part of the anti-communist Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) alliance and a supporter of the colonial settler states of South Africa and the Israeli apartheid regimes.

I further argued that the Islamic Republic, while independent of Western imperialism, was a counter-revolutionary force that by the summer of 1982 consolidated itself by brutally destroying all independent grassroots organizations that emerged from the 1979 revolution. The Islamic Republic was the brainchild of Ayatollah Khomeini, who in the early 1970s wrote a pamphlet advocating the creation of an Islamic government ruled by Velayat-e Faghih (Islamic Jurisprudence) to unify Muslims (at least Shiites). This vision requires expanding the Islamic Republic's power across the Middle East.

Thus, there has been, since 1979, an ongoing conflict between the U.S. as the leader of Western imperialism, Israeli Zionism, and the Islamic Republic; all three are expansionist, reactionary ideologies backed by state power and struggling for domination in the Middle East.

In  “Foreign Policy of the Second Trump Administration” (Nayeri, February 16, 2026), I argued that the rise of the White supremacist Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement with Trump as its leader represent a reaction to the relative decline of U.S. imperialism and an end to the so-called Pax Americana (American Peace; some called the American Century) as China has been able to industrialize and surpass the United States as the leading capitalist power. Concurrently, the European economies have been experiencing slow growth for some time. Thus, the world dominance of European civilization that began five hundred years ago has come to an end, as Asian civilizations, especially China, rise up.

The shift of the center of world power in the past has been marked by violence and wars. When Germany and the United States industrialized and surpassed Britain as the dominant industrial capitalist power, the world witnessed the bloody inter-imperialist World Wars I and II, which ended with the United States' supremacy.

Thus, we live in a very dangerous time for the following reasons.

First, the inter-imperialist rivalry is increasing and can lead to a world war in which the main contenders are nuclear states.

Second, regional wars, such as the Ukraine and Iran wars, as terrible as they are, can easily escalate into a world war. Three weeks into the US/Israel war against Iran, it has already spread to the rest of the Middle East and effectively closed the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, damaging the world economy. The war is threatening the Gulf states that depend on desalination plants for their water on the non-polluted Persian Gulf, which is open to shipping to bring in their food and export their oil.

Third, the world faces existential ecological crises such as catastrophic climate change, the Sixth Extinction, recurrent pandemics, and nuclear holocaust. To address these crises, a coordinated response by all countries, especially the most powerful, is required. Instead, we face increased rivalry and hostility among capitalist states.

Fourth, the only historical agency to act in the interest of humanity and life on Earth is the working people. If they are not organized and mobilized to act in the interest of all life on Earth, the existential crises we face can lead to the collapse of civilization and possibly the end of humanity. However, only democracy from below would allow the widest public discussion necessary to adopt the actions needed to address the crisis of anthropocentric, industrial capitalist civilization. However, increased rivalry among capitalist states and certainly this war tends to limit working people's democratic participation in deciding their own future.

Israel/US relations

Ervand Abrahamian (2026), a well-regarded historian of the Middle East, has argued that since the Obama presidency, the U.S. political class has relegated its foreign policy to Israel. This view has been shared by others, including Mazzatti et.al. 2026). Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the Trump administration “was pulled into this war” after Israel began attacking Iran in the early morning of Saturday, February 28 (Stein, March 2, 2026).  Abrahamian argues that the US's dependency on Israel is reflected in the fact that it has Middle East specialists in its foreign policy decision-making teams.

I would argue that there are more ideological/political reasons for the US following the Israelis' lead in the Middle East.  In his first term as the President, Trump tore up the 2015 agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and a group of world powers: the P5+1 (the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—plus Germany) and the European Union. Although that agreement held up well in opening the Islamic Republic's nuclear industry to international inspection. Trump's action fulfilled Benjamin Netanyahu's opposition to the agreement. In response, the Islamic Republic resumed uranium enrichment to 60 percent. They viewed this as their bargaining chip to remove sanctions. Instead, the US and its European allies increased the sanctions, and tensions increased.

Christian Zionism and Trump’s second term presidency

The U.S. played a central role in the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine in 1948, at the time of colonial revolution and Arab nationalism, to serve as a Garrison State. The concept of the Garrison State was introduced in a seminal, highly influential 1941 article in the American Journal of Sociology by political scientist and sociologist Harold Lasswell, who outlined the possibility of a political-military elite composed of "specialists in violence" in modern states.

The animosity of Israel with Palestinians and Arab neighbors manifested in a series of wars in which weak Arab neighbors were defeated, and Israel took ever more territory in Palestine and beyond.

Since the 1960s, the alliance between Israel and the United States has grown in economic, strategic, and military aspects. The U.S. has played a key role in ensuring good relations between Arab nations and Israel. In turn, Israel provides a strategic American foothold in the region as well as intelligence and advanced technological partnerships. Relations with Israel are an important factor in the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

The importance of Israel in the U.S. Middle East policy was underscored by Senator Joseph Biden, a self-described Zionist, who argued the annual U.S. aid to Israel is a “good investment” and that if there were no state of Israel, the U.S. would have to create one!

As Sharp (2025) writes in a report for the U.S. Congress:

“Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. Successive Administrations, working with Congress, have provided Israel with assistance reflective of robust domestic U.S. support for Israel and its security; shared strategic goals in the Middle East; and historical ties dating from U.S. support for the creation of Israel in 1948. To date, the United States has provided Israel with $174 billion (in current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.

“Over the last two decades, including during Israel's ongoing conflict with Hamas, American public attitudes toward Israel, as expressed in public-opinion polling, have shifted somewhat when compared to previous eras. Though lawmakers continue to vote in favor of U.S. assistance to Israel, there have been calls from some political and ideological groups to reevaluate the long-standing U.S.-Israeli assistance relationship.

“In 2016, the U.S. and Israeli governments signed their third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid, covering FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledged to provide—subject to congressional appropriation—$38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel. While negotiations over the next MOU have yet to start, U.S. and Israeli experts and government officials have already started to formulate proposals to shape future U.S.-Israeli military cooperation.

“Since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and Israel's subsequent conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, Congress has provided emergency supplemental military assistance to Israel and appropriated funding beyond the annual MOU terms for joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense programs. In April 2024, Congress passed P.L. 118-50 (Making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes). That act included, among other things, $3.5 billion in FMF for Israel. The act also included $5.2 billion in defense appropriations for missile defense ($4 billion) and Israel's new laser defense system, Iron Beam ($1.2 billion). (Sharp, 2025)”

There is also an overlooked religious/ideological basis for the current U.S. unqualified support for Israel: Christian Zionism. Christian Zionists are evangelical Christians who espouse the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land as a precondition for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. “During the 1980s, as the Republican Party forged alliances with the emerging religious right, Israel would become a core cause for the GOP. (Goldman, 2025).”

“A major impetus behind the movement is the belief that the Jews’ return will lead to the Second Coming of Jesus. Christian Zionists also believe that by blessing and supporting Israel, considered both as the collective Jewish people and the modern state, they themselves will be blessed by God.” (Comstock, January 23, 2026).

With the Republican Party in power in Washington since the 2024 elections, Christian Zionism holds sway in Washington.: 83% of Republicans view Israel favorably, compared with 33% of Democrats. Republicans in Congress are pushing to use the biblical terms “Judea and Samaria” instead of the West Bank. Evangelical Christian Zionists continue to call for support of the Israeli right and of settlers in the occupied territories. 25 to 30 percent of Trump supporters are estimated to be Christian Zionists (Stanley, February 5, 2025).

Trump's second administration includes Christian Zionists in key posts, including the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Paula White-Cain, Trump’s personal pastor for over two decades, is a Christian Zionist. She has a long history of vocal support for Israel. She was influential in Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2017 and the push to sign the Abraham Accords to get more Arab states to recognize Israel in 2020.

Trump picked two Zionists who have personal and business ties to him, Jared Kushner (son-in-law) and Steve Witkoff, to represent the U.S. government in negotiations with the Islamic Republic. These were not negotiations but a series of meetings to convey an ultimatum to the Islamic Republic that if it did not accept Trump’s demand, Iran would be attacked. Thus, Abbas Araghchi, the Islamic Republic's foreign minister and the negotiator, complained at every opportunity that the Iranian side would respond only if treated as an equal and that the U.S. side was issuing demands rather than negotiating, which requires concessions on both sides to reach a The Netanyahu government's strategy for dominance in the Middle East

Benjamin Netanyahu, currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, has been the longest-serving prime minister of Israel. This is not an accident: as a colonial-settler regime, Israel has been systematically aiming to capture more land of the historic Palestine, hence it has built an apartheid state in which Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens.

Netanyahu has been a driving force for these Zionist policies. He used Hamas’s rebellion against the Israeli-imposed open prison policy on Gaza to wage a genocidal war there and, at the same time, encourage building of settlements in the West Bank.

On April 12, 2025, Iran entered negotiations with Trump’s administration aimed at reaching a nuclear peace agreement. Trump set a 60-day deadline for Iran to reach an agreement. After the deadline passed without an agreement, Israel attacked Iran on June 13. Lazar (June 13, 2025) wrote in Times of Israel about how these negotiations were used by Israel and the U.S. to give the Islamic Republic a sense of security before a surprise attack.

In his second term, emboldened by his return to the White House, Trump has pursued gunboat diplomacy, using U.S. military superiority to advance the U.S. sphere of influence and support the U.S. economy.

The US joined the Israeli war against Iran on February 28. Netanyahu had assured Trump that, with the Axis of Resistance weakened with the fall of the Ba'athist regime in Syria, degradation of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and being deeply unpopular among a large part of the population inside Iran, it was possible to overthrow it and install a regime favorable to Washington and Israel. This would ensure U.S./Israeli domination of the Middle East.

Thus, the current U.S./Israel war against Iran is the continuation of the Israel/U.S. genocidal war in Gaza. After it became clear that the Islamic Republic would not crumble with the onset of this war and there would be no mass uprising against Iranians who would welcome the invading Israeli and American militaries, the Gaza strategy to carpet bomb Iranian cities was adopted, leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the Iranian forces. The success of the asymmetrical war strategy that was developed after the eight-year-long war with Iraq has kept the Zionist and imperialist forces at bay, creating a deadlock in the war.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has quickly pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel and forced governments to tap their strategic reserves to keep their economies running. If the Strait of Hormuz is mined, it may take months before shipping through it returns to normal. These factors tie the hands of Israel and the U.S. from their plans to massively bombard Iran.

The resistance by the Islamic Republic in this war has further weakened the United States as a declining power.

The crisis of the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization

War is a continuation of politics with violent means. Politics is concentrated economics. For five thousand years, civilizations have been built on the expropriation of nature by the exploitation of the working people. In the capitalist epoch, wars are driven by the laws of motion of capital. This undercurrent for wars is wrapped in old ideological motives. The Crusades (1095-1291 AD), a series of military campaigns launched by the papacy against Muslim rulers to recover and defend the Holy Land, were encouraged by promises of spiritual reward. Trump’s war against Venezuela, dressed as a war against drug cartels and for democratic elections, proved to be for a subservient government in Caracas and control over Venezuela's oil. The Zionist appeal to the bible and Moses is for taking over the land of Palestine from its people.

Yet the ever-increasing wealth of the ruling classes and nations is only possible by further degradation of the natural basis of life on Mother Earth. Thus, the Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran wars are not just social crises but also the intensification of existential ecological crises worldwide.

The fossil fuel industry, on which the Gulf states and Iran rely, remains the largest contributor to catastrophic climate change, accounting for 59-65% of emissions from 1990 to 2019.

Middle Eastern countries will also be among the early victims of climate change.

“The countries of the Middle East, especially Arabic-speaking ones, are among the world’s most exposed states to the accelerating impacts of human-caused climate change, including soaring heat waves, declining precipitation, extended droughts, more intense sandstorms and floods, and rising sea levels. But the consequences will be felt unevenly across the region. Resource-poor countries that lack adaptive capacities like infrastructure, technology, and human and physical capital will suffer more acutely, especially as global warming contributes to the degradation of rural livelihoods and jeopardizes food security. The effects will magnify preexisting inequities and decades of unsustainable government policies, particularly those related to water and land management” (Wehrly, 2024).

Francis and Fonseca (2025) add:

“Model projections for the ‘business-as-usual’ climate change scenario indicate that half of the population in the Middle East and North African region (roughly 600 million people) could be exposed to recurring super- and ultra-extreme heatwaves, which will feature air temperatures up to 56 °C and higher lasting for several weeks at a time, in the second half of this century21. Even though the aridity in the MENA region has significantly increased in recent decades, extreme rainfall events may be more impactful in a warming world.”(Francis and Fonseca, 2024).

The working people, the only social force that can stop this madness, must demand an end to the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran and organize ourself to discuss and adopt alternative for a better world in which humans would live in peace with each other and with the rest of life on Earth.

 

References:

Abrahamian, Ervand. “Can Iran Survive? An Urgent Discussion on the US-Israel War on Iran” Verso Books, March 20, 2026.

Berman, Lazar. “How an Israeli-American Deception Campaign Lulled Iran into a False Sense of Security.” Times of Israel. June 15, 2025.

Francis, Diana and Ricardo Fonseca. “Recent and projected changes in climate patterns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.” Nature. May 4, 2024

Comstock, Frannie. “Christian Zionism.” Britanica. January 23, 2026.“

Goldman, Shalom. “Christian Zionism hasn’t always been a conservative evangelical creed – churches’ views of Israel have evolved over decades.” The Conversation. April 2, 2025.

Mazetti,  Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager, et al. “How Trump Decided to Go to War.”  The New York Times, March 2, 2026.

Nayeri, Kamran. Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism. 2023A.

_____________. Toward a Theory of Uneven and Combined Late Capitalist Development. 2023B.

_____________. Between Dreams and Reality: Essays on Revolution and Socialism. 2025.

_____________. “The Dead End of U.S./Israeli War Against Iran.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. June 22, 2025.

_____________. “Foreign Policy of the Second Trump Administration.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism.  February 16, 2026.

Olmsted, Judith. “Let’s Just Do It: How Netanyahu Convinced Trump to Bomb Iran.” New Republic. March 2, 2026.

Sharp, Jermey M. “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel: Overview and Developments since October 7, 2023.” May 28, 2025.

Stanley, Tiffany. “Why conservative American evangelicals are among Israel’s strongest supporters.” Associated Press. February 5, 2025.

Stein, Chris. “US strikes on Iran triggered by Israel’s plan to launch attack, Rubio says.” March 2, 2026. The Guardian.

 Wehrey, Fredric. “Introduction” in Frederic Wehrey, et.al. “Climate Change and Vulnerability in the Middle East,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Jul 6, 2023.

3684. Human Nature and Socialism: Part 1. Marx and Marxists Views on Human Nature

By Kamran Nayeri, May 21, 2026

The question of human nature has long been posed.  In Western thought, Plato held that the rational soul is the essential characteristic of humans. Aristotle viewed humans as “political animals.” Unlike Plato, he viewed human nature embedded in social and natural life unfolding through participation in community and the cultivation of virtues.  Epicurus emphasized pleasure and the avoidance of suffering. Stoics argued humans participate in the rational cosmic order.

In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Abrahamic tradition, humans are generally seen as created beings who possess free will, are morally responsible, but also marked by weakness and sin.

In Eastern philosophy, Confucius emphasized human rationality, arguing that people become fully human through ethical relations, ritual, and social cultivation. Mencius argued that humans are naturally inclined toward goodness, while Xunzi held the opposite view that humans are selfish and require discipline and culture. Siddhartha Gautama, who founded Buddhism, rejected a fixed, permanent self and emphasized interdependence, impermanence, and suffering shaped by desire and attachment.

In modern times, social contract theorists held divergent views of human nature. Thomas Hobbes viewed humans as driven by fear, competition, and self-interest. John Locke viewed humans as cooperative and capable of civil society. Rousseau argued humans were not naturally corrupt and that civilization and inequality distorted human capacities.

Among political economists, Adam Smith, often identified with self-interest as the prime human motive, also emphasized sympathy and moral sentiments. David Hume argued reason alone does not govern human action, passions and habits are central.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued that human nature was not fixed but historically developed through labor, conflict, and social recognition.

Ludwig Feuerbach developed one of the most influential nineteenth-century theories of human nature as species-being. By that, he meant humans are natural, sensuous, embodied, and social beings.

Marx drew on key concepts from Hegel and Feuerbach to view humans as both natural, sensuous beings and to go further than they did.

In Theses on Feuerbach (1845), Marx defined human nature through a philosophical-anthropological lens by suggesting: “The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in every single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of social relations.” (Thesis 6) Thus, he argues against “contemplative materialism” of Feuerbach in favor of a materialist (as against Hegel’s idealist) historical understanding of human nature. Therefore, Marx argues: “The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society or social humanity.”

The concept of civil society

Aristotle viewed the political community (polis) as the natural and highest form of human association. He did not sharply separate “state” from “society” as human beings were “political animals,” whose fulfillment came through participation in communal life.  Thus, in classical Western thought, civil society and political society were fused.

In modern thought, the two concepts have been separated.  John Locke argued that civil society emerged from a social contract: individuals agreed to establish government specifically to protect their pre-existing natural rights. This was a significant departure from the classical view because it placed individual rights prior to the state.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith held that the binding principle of civil society was a private morality, grounded in self-interest but ultimately serving collective ends.

Adam Ferguson went further, contributing directly to the literature on civil society and democratic political society through his influential work in Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, emphasizing voluntary associations as a counterbalance to state power.   

G.W.F. Hegel provided the most decisive theoretical break by fundamentally redefining civil society, giving rise to a modern liberal understanding of it as a form of non-political society, distinct from the institutions of the modern nation-state. For Hegel, civil society was a “system of needs” situated between the family and the state (Brooks, 2025). It was the realm of economic activity, social interaction, and individual pursuit.[1]

In this context, Marx affirmed his view that “ the standpoint of the new [materialism] is human society or social humanity.” That is, human beings are inherently social beings whose nature, consciousness, needs, capacities, and freedom develop only through historically formed social relations.

This idea stood in opposition to the liberal view that isolated individuals are the basic units of human society. Instead, he argued that human essence is fundamentally social and historical.  

Historical materialism

In the same year, this idea of human nature became the cornerstone of their materialist conception of history in The German Ideology (Marx and Engels 1845).

Thus, they wrote:

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus, the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. 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.”

Let us underline what Marx and Engels argued in these sentences. Of course, how human individuals emerged, and their relationship with the rest of nature, are the first premises of all human history. Of course, nobody, including Marx and Engels, in 1845 had any idea of the natural history that led to the emergence of humanity. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859.  The term "biology" was coined by scientists like Lamarck and Treviranus in the 18^th century. In the 19^th century, advances in microscopy and cell theory by scientists like Schleiden and Schwann established biology as a distinct discipline, and Darwin’s theory of evolution linked all forms of life. In the 20th century, Watson and Crick discovered DNA, further solidifying biology's status as a key scientific field. Anthropology emerged as a distinct discipline in the 19th century, influenced by Darwin’s theory. Franz Boas, often called the "father of American anthropology," formalized the field in the early 20th century.  The introduction of scientific methods and fieldwork techniques solidified anthropology's status as a science.  The field of archeology was revolutionized by carbon dating, the determination of the age of organic matter from the relative proportions of the carbon isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-14 it contains. The ratio between them changes as radioactive carbon-14 decays and is not replaced by atmospheric exchange. Carbon dating was developed in the late 1940s by Willard Libby. It was first widely used in the early 1950s, marking a milestone. The technique allowed for dating organic materials up to about 50,000 years old. It provided a scientific method to establish timelines for archaeological finds. Carbon dating helped confirm and refine historical chronology. Its introduction led to a paradigm shift in dating methods used by archaeologists and anthropologists.

On this basis, we know that life emerged on Earth 3.5 to 4 billion years ago; the homo genus emerged 2.5 million years ago; and Homo sapiens emerged about 300,000 years ago. 

In contrast, in the mid-nineteenth century, Marx and Engels had access only to three thousand years of written history. Thus, they were quite correct to admit “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.” They lacked knowledge about humanity’s natural history, especially the 2.5 million years of our history as hunter-gatherers. Therefore, they could not have developed a materialist conception of history because, in their own words, “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.”

Their theory of society and history, historical materialism, was, of necessity, limited to three thousand years of written history of class societies (civilization).

Marxism and human nature

Engels, aware of this shortcoming, sought to address it to some extent by writing The Origins of Family, Private Property, and the State (1884).  In this, he was following Marx’s notes on Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (1877).  Morgan was an American anthropologist and social theorist who developed his theory of stages of human progress. Building on the data about kinship and social organization presented in Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871), Morgan developed his theory of the three stages of human progress, from savagery through barbarism to civilization. 

In his book, Engels attempts to show how, in line with historical materialism, all social institutions ultimately reflect economic conditions. This includes the family, and Morgan’s research on how the family has evolved over time provided substantial evidence of this. Morgan’s greatest insight is to discover, in prehistoric times, a “matriarchal gens,” a family structure that passed on the family's rights and privileges through the mother, tracing back to an original female ancestor. The mere existence of such a structure refutes the contemporary notion that marriage has always been a strictly monogamous arrangement with the father squarely in charge. If that arrangement is, in fact, the contingent byproduct of social forces, then imagining the world before patriarchy makes it possible to envision a world after. The book then proceeds in chronological order, beginning with a broad overview of humanity’s progression through three phases of development that Engels, following Morgan’s example, terms “savagery,” “barbarism,” and “civilization.” Engels details a series of premodern family structures in which consanguinity, or the sharing of a bloodline, was the central arrangement rather than monogamous marriage. Such systems also tended toward matriarchy, as maternity was far easier to prove than paternity. Thus mothers were the most reliable conveyers of the bloodline from one generation to the next. It was the ancient Greeks who were primarily responsible for the establishment of patriarchy, following an intense period of economic development that induced a handful of powerful families to concentrate wealth in their own hands, ultimately treating their own wives and children as property as well. To preserve their wealth, the patriarchs then created states, formally neutral entities that were, in fact, charged with preserving the status quo by which the few continued to enrich themselves at the expense of the many.

After a painstaking overview of the transition from matriarchy under the Iroquois in North America and the “barbarian” peoples of Europe to the patriarchy of Greece and Rome, Engels sees the last flash of hope in the German and Frankish tribes, which destroyed the Roman Empire and passed on a flicker of individual liberty, which ultimately allowed for the abolition of serfdom. As matters currently stand, capitalism has turned most people into producers of commodities, over which they exercise no meaningful control. “Civilization” itself, in Engels’s view, is a nice word for a condition of acute class warfare. Humanity must therefore reach into its past to reclaim freedom in its future.

In 1890, Engels further developed his ideas about human nature in the essay “The Role of Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man.”  He argued that evolution from ape to man resulted from the ape’s interaction with its environment, which not only changed the environment but also transformed the ape into man. Levin and Lewontin (1980, p. 453), an ecologist and evolutionary geneticist, put it: “He saw ‘environment’ not as a passive selective force external to the organism but rather as the product of human activity, the special feature of the human niche being productive labor and cooperation, which channeled the evolution of hand and brain.”

Levins and Lewontin’s approach to human nature

In Dialectical Biologist (1985), Levins and Lewontin argue that human nature is not a fixed, genetically programmed blueprint, but a flexible, constantly evolving process created by the interaction between biology and society. They reject biological determinism, the idea that genes dictate human behavior) Moreover, cultural determinism, the idea that biology does not matter. Instead, they propose dialectical determinism to offer a holistic alternative.

They argued against E. O. Wilson's (1978) On Human Nature, which attempts to explain human nature and society through sociobiology. Wilson argues that evolution has left its traces on characteristics such as generosity, self-sacrifice, worship, and the use of sex for pleasure, and proposes a sociobiological explanation of homosexuality. He attempts to complete the Darwinian revolution by bringing biological thought into the social sciences and humanities. On Human Nature was a sequel to his earlier books The Insect Societies (1971) and Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975).[2]

“For Marxists the evolution of humans from prehumans and the inclusion of human history in natural history presupposed both continuity and discontinuities, qualitative change, but for most materialists evolution meant simply continuity. (Levins and Levinton, 1985, p. 254).”

They continue later:

“No political theorist, not even the completely historicist Marx, has been able to dispense with the problem of human nature; on the contrary, all have found it fundamental to the construction of their worldview. After all, if we want to give a normative description of society, how can we say how society ought to be organized unless we claim to know what human beings are really like (ibid.).”

They then critique “reductionist” views of human nature, focusing on E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology.

“Since the individual is ontologically prior to the social organization, it is genetically determined human nature that gives shape to society. Wilson (1978) gives an explicit exposition of this theory. The biologically deterministic theory of human nature is logically consistent (ibid.).”  

“The most superficial disagreement with the conservative theory has come both from liberals and from the anarchist left. This position holds that there is indeed a biologically determined human nature and that a prescription for society can be written using knowledge of that innate nature, but that conservatives have simply got the details wrong. Whereas apologists for unrestrained competitive capitalism claim aggressiveness, entrepreneurial activity, male domination, territoriality, and xenophobia as the content of human nature, left anarchists give a contrary description, arguing as Kropotkin did in Mutual Aid that people are really cooperative and altruistic underneath but have been coerced into competition by an artificial world. These critics agree with the conservatives that a basic set of attributes is natural to human being as an entity as an entity in isolation but that these attributes may be suppressed by societies, that are either unnaturally competitive, as one’s taste runs.

“A more subtle version of the human nature argument flows from classical Marxism.  According to what little can be found in Marx on the subject, this theory holds that labor is the property that marks off the human species from all others, although it is not sufficient to specify the form of social relations. Human labor is marked by these features: it transforms the world of nature into a world of artifacts that serve human beings (ibid. pp. 254-55).”

Levins and Lewontin underscore that this transformation of nature is teleological: the end product is envisioned by humans and actualized through cooperative effort, using tools and implements, to arrive at the anticipated end product(s). They also note that some nonhumans behave similarly, citing Jane Goodall’s observations of chimpanzees. They also object to the universality of the classical Marxist claim that all humans at all times behave this way. They cite the Kalahari Bushmen, who alter nature minimally and, rather than producing, plan consumption. The point is well taken only if we explicitly recognize the difference between hunter-gatherer cultures and the culture of civilized (class) societies. As we have discussed, it was with the rise of agriculture that hunter-gatherer animist views of the world were set aside, and anthropocentrism (a human-centered worldview) was adopted. I will return to this key issue later.

The second problem with the classical Marxist view[3] is that even if true, it is not very informative. “It cannot be used to project any actual features of human social organization, nor to say how that organization may or may not change (ibid, p. 265).”

“A radical alternative has been to deny the existence of human nature altogether, at least in any non-trivial sense. Human beings are simply what they make of themselves (ibid.).”

The existentialist Simon de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1953) makes this argument using Marx. She wrote:

“When we abolish the slavery of half humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the division

“ of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form. ‘The direct, natural and necessary relation of human creatures is its relation of man to woman,” Marx has said. ‘The nature of this relation determines to what point man himself is to be considered as a generic being, as mankind; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation human being to human being. By it is shown, therefore, to what point natural behavior of man becomes human, or at that point, the human being has become his nature.”[4]

Levins and Lewontin hold that the question of human nature is the wrong question because it reflects the analysis we bring to understanding of human political and social life. Partly it “carries a vestige of Platonic idealism.” (ibid. p. 257).

“The evident fact about human life is the incredible diversity in individual life histories and in social organization across space and time. The attempt to understand this diversity by looking for some underlying ideal uniformity called ‘human nature,’ of which the manifest variation is only a shadow, is reminiscent of the pre—Darwinian” idealism of biological thought (ibid.)

They also criticize the tabula rasa hypothesis, which holds that humans are born with a blank slate, unaffected by their biology. Proponents of the view include Aristotle, Ibn Sina (11th century), Ibn Tufail (12^th century), Agustina (13^th century), Descartes (17^th century),  John Locke (17^th century), and Freud (19^th century).

Science has shown that we are not blank slates at birth and that biology matters in human life histories.

Moreover, there are universal needs in every species, including humans, such as the need for food. Warm-blooded animals like mammals and birds require much more food than cold-blooded animals like reptiles, as they must maintain a constant body temperature. Humans need specific nutrients, such as vitamin C, because our bodies can no longer produce them internally.  We respond to stress the same way other mammals do: increased adrenaline levels, higher blood pressure, and a faster heartbeat. As in other mammals, the regulation of breathing, blood circulation, digestion, and other functions is managed by the secretion of hormones and the unconscious activities of the autonomic nervous system.

However, humans have complemented their bodies' innate needs with socially produced needs. We use clothing and shelter, and fuel to warm or cool our bodies.  Our body temperature now is also a function of our economic standing, as some of us cannot afford food, shelter, or fuel. Our ability to avoid and live in stressful situations is related to our social standing. Etc.

Levins and Lewontin offer an example of how humans meet their need for food to show its historical and social aspects. A fundamental ecological problem confronting all organisms is how to cope with the uncertainty of their food supply. Cold-blooded animals live slowly, so their nutritional state depends on what they have eaten over the past few weeks or months. Mammals and birds live quickly. They eat, process, and use up food in a day or even in hours. So, they are more vulnerable to environmental variability. One way to deal with this is to store food as body fat.

People have invented ways to store food by curing, salting, smoking, cooking, or refrigerating it. People also redistribute food through their social networks by creating social ties and obligations, so today’s food can be tomorrow’s if supply problems arise. As food is widely monetized, it can be separated from its original purpose of providing nutritional value and, under certain conditions, become an insatiable goal.  Food as a commodity traded internationally creates new sources of uncertainty. Fluctuations in food prices become detached from local conditions. Thus, the price of grain would become more a function of what happens in Argentina or Canada. Further, food production becomes increasingly detached from its nutritional goals and more aligned with the profitability of the food-producing industry.  What people should eat has been biologically determined. What people can eat is an entirely different question.  Eating has become a social occasion that cements family or friendship bonds, but it has also become an opportunity for commercial exchange or for creating mutual social obligations. Hundred-dollar plate dinner invitations are not about feeding anyone nutrition, but about sustaining the body politic.

Critique of the Marxian view of human nature

If we take the above presentation of the Marxian view of human nature (assuming there is such a thing), let me summarize its key elements:

First, Marx did not have a well-defined theory of human nature. In his Theses on Feuerbach, he limited it to “the ensemble of the social relations.” While it is true that Marx considered human interaction with the rest of nature in his theory of society and history, historical materialism, he abstracted from nature:

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus, the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. 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.”  Levins and Lewontin admit “little can be found in Marx on the subject” (Levins and Lewontin, 1985, p. 255), that is, about human nature.  At the same time, they also admit the importance of a theory of human nature for socialism: “how can we say how society ought to be organized unless we claim to know what human beings are really like (ibid. p. 254).”

Thus, Marx’s theory of socialism has an inadequate theory of human nature. I have argued that Marx’s theories are anthropocentric, while the existential crises of the 21^st century are ecological-social (ecosocial) (Nayeri, 2021, 2023, Chapter 19).

 Second, Engels’ attempt to develop Marx’s thinking on human nature contributed significantly to it in the sense that he followed Marx’s notes on Morgan and developed them to locate the transition of the hunter-gatherers' social organization and culture that was communal and animistic to civilization (class society) with the emergence of private property, family, and the state as markers of the transition. Of course, in the late nineteenth century, little was known about our prehistory, including hunter-gatherers and the emergence and evolution of life on the planet. Levins and Lewinont (ibid. p. 255) point to the explanatory limit of Engels’ hypothesis.

Third, Marxists, including Levins and Lewontin, entirely miss the world-historic changes in human culture from ecocentrism to anthropocentrism. As others and I have argued, the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture required alienation from nature and the need to dominate and control it systematically for social reproduction.

Fourth, as Levins and Lewontin note, the “orthodox Marxist view…even if true” is “not very informative. It cannot be used to project any actual feature of human social organization, nor to say how that organization may or may not change (ibid. p. 256).”

Finally, while I agree with Levins and Lewontin’s criticism of E. O. Wilson’s theory of human nature and sociobiology (more nuanced in his later writings, with his emphasis on epigenic influences) that he goes too far out on a limb trying to synthesize biology with the humanities and social sciences, Marx and Marxists can be similarly accused of venturing too far out from a critique of political economy human society and history as Levins’ and Lewontin admit themselves. As some of the key problems of our time are clearly specific to the present capitalist mode of production, others, such as religion and war, date back to prehistory but are now articulated within a capitalist world economy (Nayeri, 2015).  Furthermore, I know of no Marxist who has shown as much attention and care for the natural world as Wilson has. He was not only a world-class entomologist and a prominent biologist, but also a prolific author of many biological and biologically related books, and a conservationist. His Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016), the last in a trilogy beginning with The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) and The Meaning of Human Existence (2014), is demanding that half the Earth’s land and ocean be set aside from human intervention to allow wildlife to prosper. A very small-scale experiment of his ambitious idea was documented in the movie Wilding (2024), as the couple who owned it allowed all plants and animals to go wild (for a review of the movie, see here).

In the next part, I will discuss the contribution of Gregory Bateson’s view of human nature. He argued that human beings are not isolated but parts of larger ecological, communicative, and evolutionary systems. He rejected the modern Western split between mind and nature, humanity and environment, and subject and object.  

--to be continued.

 

References:

Brooks. Thom. “Hegel’s Social and Political Philosophy.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2025.

Engels, Friedrich. Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. 1884.

Morgan, Lewis Henry. Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. 1877.

Nayeri, Kamran. “An Ecological Socialist's Reflection on Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. October 16, 2015.

_____________. “E. O.Wilson: The Sixth Extinction: Life and Death in the Biosphere.” December 12. 2016.

_____________. “The Case for Ecocentric Socialism.” 2021.

_____________. Whose Planet? Essays on Ecocentric Socialism. 2023.

Levins, Richard, and Richard Lewontin. The Dialectical Biologist. 1985.

Wilson, E. O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. 1975.

___________. On Human Nature. 1978.

___________. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. 1999.

___________. The Social Conquest of the Earth. 2012.

___________. The Meaning of Human Existence. 2015.

___________. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. 2016.

 

 

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[1]  In "The Phenomenology of Spirit," Hegel discusses the development of self-consciousness and social relations."The Phenomenology of Spirit" - Discusses the development of self-consciousness and social relations.

"The Science of Logic" - Explores the conceptual framework that underpins civil society.

"Elements of the Philosophy of Right" - Provides a detailed analysis of civil society as a distinct sphere of ethical life. "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences" - Offers a systematic overview of civil society within Hegel's broader philosophical system."Lectures on the Philosophy of History" - Examines the historical context and evolution of civil society. "The Philosophy of History" - Discusses the role of civil society in the development of freedom and ethical life. "The Science of Logic" - Explores the conceptual framework that underpins civil society. In "Elements of the Philosophy of Right," he provides a detailed analysis of civil society as a distinct sphere of ethical life. In "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences," Hegel offers a systematic overview of civil society in his broader philosophical system. In  "Lectures on the Philosophy of History," he examines the historical context and evolution of civil society. "The Philosophy of History" Discusses the role of civil society in the development of freedom and ethical life.

[2] Levins, Lewontin, and Wilson were all professors at Harvard University, with their labs and offices close to each other.

[3] Levins and Lewontin use “classical Marxist” view and “Orthodox Marxist” view interchangeably. They were among the young radicals in the United States who were initially attracted to the pro-Moscow Communist Party, later became disillusioned with it, and formed the radical Science for the People as a loosely organized political organization. The author joined this group in 2008. In the post-Occupy Wall Street action, some Generation Alpha, the first full generation not to have known a world without smartphones and social media, who became radicalized scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, formed the new generation of Science for the People. The earlier generations, who were mostly active in politics through the Science for the People online discussion list, gradually abandoned it as they aged.   

[4] The quotation is from Marx’s Philosophic Manuscripts, vol. 6; italics are in the original. 

3684. Film Review: Wilding (2024)

By Elizabeth Stanforth-Sharpe, Yorkshire Magazine, No date 

The Knepp Castle estate has been in the hands of the Burrell family since 1787, with Sir Charles Burrell, the 10th baronet, inheriting in 1987, at the age of 21. For 17 years, he and his wife, Isabella Tree, farmed the land intensively, employing fertilizers, pesticides, mechanical agriculture, and the use of antibiotics for livestock, just as he had been brought up to do.

But in 2000, they realized that the soil that had been exhausted with a cocktail of chemicals for many years wasn’t functioning as it should. Earthworms no longer played their part, essential microbes had been killed, and crops were depleted. Along with many farmers, they were surviving on government subsidies, which, in turn, were being spent on more fertilizers and more pesticides, which perpetuated the damage being done. The land was no longer sustainable.

Alongside this, there was a growing national concern that species of birds, butterflies, wildflowers, insects, and mammals once prevalent in Britain were disappearing. Could there be a connection between these losses and the state of the soil?

The Burrells began to feel instinctively that there was.

“Revitalized”

They employed Ted Green, a leading arboriculturist, to look at the ailing ancient oak trees on the estate, to teach them how the mycorrhizal network had been damaged in the root systems that spread directly underneath their arable crops, and, most importantly, how they could begin to rectify the situation. Making the decision to change an ancestral landscape that has been farmed in a particular way for over 200 years is one that is loaded with doubts and guilt, and the day they auctioned off the machinery and livestock equipment was so painful that Charlie Burrell couldn’t bear to witness the proceedings, but deep in his heart he knew that this was how it had to be.

Moving forward, the Burrells removed fences, introduced wild Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs, and ancient breeds of cattle, and tentatively watched to see how they would adapt to the seasons. After initial teething problems, they thrived.

The Burrell’s excitement as the soil revitalized, new species grew, and insects, mammals, and birds populated the habitat, was not always matched by the neighboring farms. They regarded the lack of controlled crops as the direct opposite of what farming should be about. They thought the estate was a disgrace, the Burrell’s were irresponsible, and the swathes of ragwort that had grown through were a poison threat to grazing animals. Public opinion was turning against them.

It was discouraging, but still they pressed on, emboldened by the numerous chain reactions of the wilding process. One such link was the wind distribution of willow seed. The rootling of the pigs turned up damp, moist soil that was perfect for the willow seed to thrive and grow. Willow is the food of the larvae of the Purple Emperor, one of the rarest species of butterfly. Knepp became home to the largest population of Purple Emperor in the country.

3683. What Is the Universe?

 By Leonard Susskind, What Is the Universe? February 2026

3682. Book Review: Michael Roberts on Three Books about Capitalist History and Transformation, Controlling or Replacing Capitalism

By Michael Roberts, Michael Roberts Blog, April 22, 2026

This post reviews some recent economics books published by various authors, both Marxist and non-Marxist.

Let me start with a magnum opus, Capitalism – a global history, by Sven Beckert. Beckert is the Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches the history of the United States in the 19th century and global history.  His ‘Capitalism’ is called a ‘monumental book’ by global inequality expert, Thomas Piketty, himself an author of an eariler gargantuan publication back in 2014 called Capital in the 21st century (Piketty’s suggestion then was that he was ‘updating’ Marx’s Capital from the 19th century). 

Beckert in contrast is not trying to update or critique Marx’s Capital.  Instead, as an economic historian, he aims to paint a broad canvas of the rise of capitalism from its early embryonic origins, that he takes back to 1000 years ago. He does not provide a theoretical analysis of capitalism as Piketty tries in his book.  This book is very much more descriptive than analytical.  He delivers a global view of capitalism , not confined what he calls the ‘eurocentric’ approach of others. That is the book’s merit, full of anecdotes and examples of capitalists at work worldwide.  But the book’s de-merit is its lack of any systematic understanding of capitalism.  Indeed, it is like the work of Adam Tooze – namely, it is ‘more the how, than the why’.

As the blurb says for the book, “Sven Beckert, author of the Bancroft Prize–winning Empire of Cotton , places the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework, tracing its history during the past millennium and across the world. An epic achievement, his book takes us into merchant businesses in Aden and car factories in Turin, onto the terrifyingly violent sugar plantations in Barbados, and within the world of women workers in textile factories in today’s Cambodia”.

Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from trading communities across Asia, Africa, and Europe.  And capitalism can only be described as a global phenomenon. “This book understands capitalism as, above all, a global development whose local articulations can only be understood globally. The economic dynamics of a given place are inescapably shaped by its connections to the outside world. There is no “French capitalism” or “American capitalism”; rather, there is capitalism in France and America, which have contested and complicated relationships with capitalism elsewhere, indeed everywhere “

Beckert makes big claims for the revolutionary nature of capitalism. “It was a fundamental break in human history not just because it revolutionized economic affairs but because it turned human relations upside down; infiltrated our politics, societies, and cultures; altered the natural environment we inhabit; and made revolution a permanent feature of economic life. The capitalist revolution is the only revolution whose fundamental core is that it is ongoing, that it qualifies as a state of permanent revolution.” 

But of course, he recognises that capitalism has its faults. “Capitalism is also distinctive for the particular kinds of social inequalities and global hierarchies it creates.”  But Beckert does not want to take sides between those authors supporting and those critiquing capitalism. “On one side, Marx’s writings became sacred texts through which to filter the politics du jour; on the other side, scholars read capitalism’s history through the equally sacralizing lens of Adam Smith’s writings. This book strives to avoid either idolatrous extreme.” 

Actually, it is not true that Marx did not recognise the great changes that capitalism made to human progress; or that Adam Smith saw no faultlines in market economies. But Beckert resorts to descriptive history rather than economic insight. As Beckert puts it: “this work is an effort to reclaim capitalism as a territory for historical investigation. This history will show that capitalism is neither a state of nature nor a process whose internal logic determines its eventual outcome in more than the most general way.”  So the Marxist materialist conception of history and Marx’s explanation of the internal contradictions in capitalism are to be put aside; as are the views of mainstream neoclassical economists that markets and profit making are an eternal and beneficial feature of human social organisation. Instead, capitalism is a contingent history.

Beckert does not hide the brutal nature of the emergence of capitalism globally. “Although capitalism’s history is often told as a story of contracts, private property, and wage labor—that is, stylized as a history of the realization of human freedom—there is another story, equally important, about vast expropriations, huge mobilizations of coerced labor, brutality in factories and on plantations, fierce destructions of noncapitalist economies, and massive extractions of resources for private gain. Capitalism rested, as we will see in the chapters that follow, not just on productivity gains but on enormous appropriations”.

Many of the early sections of the book give the reader a panoramic view of the capitalist process at work across the world, even when other social formations like, slavery, feudalism and Asian despotism were dominant. Unfortunately, when Beckert gets into 20th century, the period when capitalism became fully dominant globally as the mode of production and social formation, Beckert’s analysis becomes weaker. He notes the post-1970s crisis of reconstructed capitalism, ie the neoliberal period, but it seems he remains confident that capitalism is here to stay despite the accumulating economic, environmental and geopolitical crises that we see accelerating in the 21st century. ”We can anticipate that capitalism will remain a global totality, even if the nature of that totality continues to change, perhaps in radical and surprising ways. We can expect capitalism’s enormous creativity to persist, along with its amazing adaptability.” 

Or does he? “Eventually, however, there will be a moment when capitalism ends. Regardless of whether we fear or hope for that end, capitalism, like everything in human history, is finite, even if it is impossible to say when or how it will end or what will replace it.”  But even if capitalism is to give way to a new stage of human social organisation, it will take a very long time and “be interwoven within capitalism itself, just as capitalism was itself embedded in noncapitalist societies for centuries.”  Or maybe not – if the “ecological and social crises unfolding right now and right here become unbearable”.   All these maybes are a product of his descriptive approach to the history of capitalism.

Another opus magnum is the latest book by former World Bank lead economist and global inequality expert, Branco Milanovic.  I have posted several times on Milanovic’s indepth studies of global inequality, but this new book is not so much about inequality but more about what he considers is the great transformation in the world economy that is taking place –namely the movement of economic power from North America and Europe to Asia. “The first defining change is the much greater importance of, and the movement of economic activity towards, Asia and the Pacific.”

The second big change is the result of that shift. As China became richer, the Chinese people also became richer. That meant that people who were in the lower-middle class in the US, Germany, or Italy, for the first time in the last 200 years, fell behind substantial numbers of people from Asia. “At the level of the nation-state, we have had a movement towards much greater importance of Asia in economics and politics. At the level of personal incomes, we see the decline of the Western middle class.”

Milanovic argues that the Industrial Revolution transformed the countries that were leading the industrialization—the UK, France, Northern Europe, then the United States, and finally Japan—and made their people much richer than people elsewhere. But In the last 40 years, we have had, for the first time, a serious challenge to that. Countries in Asia are now not only catching up but, in some cases, even overtaking Western countries technologically.

This has led to a new cold war not now based on ideology (capitalism v communism, as with the US and the Soviet Union), but now economically between the US and China. If China continues with real GDP growth rates 2-3% points higher than the US rate, within one generation, and a maximum of two generations, you will have the same number of people in China who are above the US median income as Americans. “If one thinks that the real sign of catching up is when China becomes equally rich on a per capita basis as the United States, it will take a long time. But before that happens, China as a nation would be much more powerful than the United States simply because it is so much bigger.”  But see my forthcoming paper on Catching up , to be published by the World Association of Political Economy.

Milanovic says there are three views on the benefits or otherwise of the globalisation of trade and finance in the last 40 years. The mainstream one is that trade among nations benefits all countries and so leads to peace. Adam Smith is more nuanced and argued that only ‘balanced trade’ would maintain peace. But there is the Hobson-Luxemburg-Lenin theory, which holds that the big powers would fight for control of the resources and assets of the rest of the world and that would eventually lead them to war ie imperialism.  Milanovic tends to a mix of the last two views.  The end of globalisation and free trade has led to a loss of living standards for many in the West and thus “a huge dissonance between different parts of the Western population.”  I would add that globalisation led to a massive transfer of value and resources from the Global South to the Global North, hitting living standards not just in the Global North but also for the vast majority in the Global South..

According to Milanovic, neoliberal globalism has now been replaced by ‘national market liberalism.’  Tariffs are being imposed and immigration controls are increasing.  The world has moved from option two to option three. ”We still have neoliberalism, but only at the national level. We end up with a version of neoliberalism stripped of its international component.” Milanovic concludes that “we clearly have a global disorder.” But he lays his hope on the world moving towards a multipolar system. Eventually, “we can build a more equitable international system where major powers have a greater stake than they do now.”  So a new balance of trade and finance and economic power can emerge. Option three becomes option two again, hmm.

Mariana Mazzucato is another rock star economist of the ‘left’, once called the world’s scariest economist.  I have reviewed many of her previous books (search my blog). But it seems she does not really scare the international powers that be.  She is regularly invited to speak around the world at various mainstream economic gatherings and as an adviser to governments.  Her latest book is called The Common Good Economy.  This follows on from a previous book, the Mission economy. – each time a new attractive title suggesting economic innovation and insight.

Mazzucato tells us that “Our economic system is broken. The climate crisis is accelerating. Inequality is deepening. Public trust is crumbling. Wealth concentrates in fewer hands while governments scramble to fix what markets can’t do, rather than to shape them from the outset.”  So what should well-meaning governments do? Instead of trying to correct these ‘market failures’ and trying to patch up problems, governments need “to proactively build the economy we need”.  She offers a ‘new theory of the common good, one which allows governments and businesses to develop purposeful economic relationships, creating value and building spaces where human flourishing can happen.”

As in previous books, she starts from the premiss that what is needed is ‘partnership’ between an ‘activist’ state and capitalist businesses – ‘participation and reciprocity’.  You see “capitalism and workers’ rights are not in tension — they are co-dependent. Industrial policy that includes workers in design and delivery produces better outcomes for all.”   So the answer is not to replace capitalism, but to strengthen worker representation in decision-making bodies, including corporate boards.  Governments must encourage capitalist companies to invest but under what she calls “green and social conditionalities across all sectors” so “ensuring we socialize both risks and rewards through smart (??) public financing.”   What is needed is not socialism, but with “strong social contracts into our industrial policies now, we can ensure this historic wave of green investment builds an economy that works for both people and planet.”  We need “mission-oriented industrial policy that treats workers as co-creators of value — with conditionalities that share the rewards.” Mazzucato sort of admits that such a social contract with conditionalities placed on the big multinationals, the fossil fuel giants and the financial sector would be “a delicate task, as too much micromanaging with a shopping list of conditions can, of course, stifle innovation.” On the other hand, “close relationships with private firms could make governments prone to capture.”  Indeed!

Mazzucato continues her merry way across the globe at conferences, government meetings etc to advocate ‘mission projects’; conditionalities on big business and a social contract between workers and bosses – all for the ‘common good’ economy.  Dare I say it, but clever jargon and trendy titles do not make for radical change.

Ann Pettifor in her new book, Global Casino, does not even look for radical change.  You see, unregulated global finance is causing the crises we see in the world economy.  The global market in money – housed in the offshore ‘shadow’ banking system – holds $217 trillion in financial assets and operates beyond the reach of any nation’s taxman. Asset managers, private equity firms, and pension and sovereign wealth funds scoop up the world’s savings for investment and manage them as they choose, unaccountable to politicians or the citizens who elect them.

But it does not require socialist or very radical measures to sort this out.  Pettifor: “societies and gov­ernments can take back control of the global financial system. We have done it before and can do it again. Indeed, it is imperative that we do so, if we are to manage the twin threats of climate breakdown and biosphere collapse.”  Pettifor reckons that in those halcyon days after the second world war, a global financial order was established with the Bretton Woods agreement to manage ‘global imbalances’ and currency and trade flows as well as regulation of financial excesses and recklessness.  But President Nixon blew all this up internationally when he took the dollar off the gold standard in the early 1970s and later government leaders deregulated the financial sector, turning the world economy into a giant casino.  This was the reason for the global financial crash in 2008-9 –  it has nothing to do with falling profitability of capital or any other rigid Marxist explanation.  The answer now is to return to the post-war period of managed trade and financial regulation – simples.  But I think not.

What is stopping a return to global regulation being implemented is the current ideology. Pettifor, in an interview on her book: “If you read the Financial Times, people who talk about managing trade are treated as mad Trotskyists. I dare not say it because I don’t want to be branded as a mad Trotskyist, I’m just a very moderate Keynesian, for God’s sake. But even my moderate views are considered extreme in the world of free markets. And how we overcome that ideology is the issue that we face.”

You see Pettifor knows what she is talking about – unlike the rest of us on the left. “What always strikes me about the great financial crisis of 2007–9 was that the Left didn’t know it was coming. I am very proud of having written The Coming First World Debt Crisis (2006), but the rest of the Left didn’t see it coming. People talked about globalization as if it was a given. And then when it blew up, there was no plan B. We didn’t even know it could happen. We were as stupid as the chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. The Left was as stupid as Greenspan, who said he didn’t believe it could happen.” Actually many on the left (at least the Marxist left) did see the financial crash coming (see my paper here). And what is this plan B to replace globalisation and unregulated speculative finance?  According to Pettifor, it is restoring proper regulation.  But regulation always fails. Indeed, since the Great Recession, there have been several banking crises, despite increased regulation. 

Moreover, if the cause of all our woes globally is an uncontrolled financial sector, why does Pettifor not call for the public ownership of the banking system in the major economies and the closure of hedge funds and other speculative forms of finance capital? Instead, Pettifor offers a tax on speculative financial transactions and capital controls on footloose capital flows – and which governments are going to introduce these?  This is like putting a bandage on a gaping wound with blood flowing from a pierced artery.

Mazzucato offers us capitalism with ‘conditionalities’ for the common good and Pettifor offers us capitalism ‘regulated and managed’. Only one book proposes ending the capitalist mode of production and it is not by a feted academic, but by an Irish Marxist activist. James O-Toole’s Economics for the Exploited is written from a working class point of view.  He explains clearly and simply how capitalism works and why it cannot deliver the needs of humanity any more.

O’Toole covers Marx’s law of value and answers its critics clearly (he explains Marx’s law of profitability and even deals with the so-called ‘transformation problem’).  He explains the cause of economic crises, inflation and the rise of imperialism. And he outlines the case for a planned economy under common ownership and democratic control as the way forward for humanity and the planet.

“Modern humans have been on Earth for around 300,000 years. Class society is a few thousands years old and capitalism only a few hundred. There’s nothing “natural” about this system. In those few hundred years capitalism has brought us to the point where corporate greed could actually destroy the natural underpinnings of any advanced social order. The clock is ticking. This system isn’t natural. We can live in other ways. We workers produce this system. It’s in our hands. Workers have to take control.”