Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

Abstract

will enable us to re-establish our connections to the natural world. I have my doubts. The capacity for a global, encompassing love – as opposed to care for family or pack or ecosystem partners – is a distinctly human capacity that must be socially cultivated. Just being “back in nature” is not enough, since nature is, along with its cooperation, also a scene of competition and transformation – a transformation in which, as we know, countless species have died. That new species, as Buhner suggests, will replace the ones we’ve eliminated, may in fact be true. I doubt that the environmental crisis will wipe out all life on earth. But is that enough? Not for me. For our grief is not just for what we (and the world) have lost. It is also for what we as a species have done. And that grief cannot simply be assuaged by blaming capitalists, governments, and kept scientists. For these only have power, ultimately, because the rest of us let them have it. The crimes of our species are ours – a shared source of responsibility, and – given our ongoing failures – of grief as well.