The general cultural and educational level promoted within modern hierarchical mass societies, ensures that an anthropocentric viewpoint dominates the thinking of the vast majority of humanity. At its most basic level the ideology generated by the capitalist mode of production views the planet from a perspective of bourgeois property ownership. From the feudal elite perspective, the local land (and everything living on it) was ‘their” land obtained by conquest and inheritance. By a similar process, from the bourgeois elite perspective, the entire planet is effectively ‘their’ planet and most of it has by now been obtained by purchase and deed of transfer. This cultural concept of human beings owning land and nature has permeated all classes of society until it is no longer generally questioned and has taken the ideological form of taken for granted Anthropocentrism. Humanity in general now views the planet (and everything on it) as ‘our’ planet and the only question frequently raised is the unfair allocation of portions of it to individuals by means of their accumulated monetary wealth.

Furthermore, according to bourgeois law, the owner can legally do whatever they want with their property. If a capitalist individual or consortium buys a forest, then cutting it down and planting a mono crop is currently their legal right and entirely their own ‘business’. If another consortium of capitalists purchase the land and means to process sewage, then that is ‘their’ business and they can discharge it in rivers and seas in any treated or untreated condition they choose. Indeed, in general, the global capitalist elites are still acting 24/7 in accordance with this bourgeois intellectually constructed paradigm of individuals of one species owning and effectively controlling the rest of life on earth. This practice of ownership rights over the natural world is so culturally embedded that no serious challenges to that ‘basic right’ come from any other sections of humanity. Yet it is common knowledge that the establishment of ‘life on earth’ has been an evolutionary process continuing over billions of years, in which the planetary resources throughout evolution have been shared among millions of species life-forms. However, particularly in the last two centuries or so, humanity has produced an elite with a colossal level of wealth and arrogance, combined with a wilful ecological ignorance.

Since the Industrial Revolution the capitalist orientated bourgeoisie have begun to feel entitled to do whatever they want to other members of their own species (genocidally eliminate them and/or enslave them) and to do whatever they want to the rest of the planetary species of life (tear down forests, chemically assassinate insects, pollute air, land and seas). This characteristic of allowing individuals to undermine or destroy the earths life support system is an indictment of the low level of intelligence and wisdom of both the global elite and their millions of middle-class supporters in academia, media, entertainment, education, science, politics and government. For as opportunistic individuals the latter groups either turn a welcoming or blind eye to such activities and to their own more nuanced but nonetheless conspicuous consumption and pollution. To the firmly entrenched Anthropocene man (and woman) their particular section of the human species is all that really matters, and the rest of life on earth, apart from favoured pets, zoos and wild-life conservation parks, has to just get out the way or otherwise they will be pushed out of the way or eliminated in one way or another.

Placing humans first, clearly represents a commonly held anthropocentric viewpoint concerning life on earth and it is one, which has been a dominant view in religion and secular politics since the formation of hierarchical mass societies. Nevertheless, in actual fact, both in pre-historic, historic and biological terms, nature (life on earth) came before multi-cellular species of life and multi-cellular and multiple species of life came before a branch of the hominid species evolved to be human. Indeed, the so-called higher sentient species of which humans claim to be the most important, still absolutely depend upon the prior and continued existence of a whole network of visible and invisible inter-dependent life forms providing the oxygenated air, and the basic food and habitat chains on which the sentient beings rely to survive and reproduce. The real world came before the ideas about the real world and the human species ultimately remained (and still remains) more dependent upon biology than upon sociology. As noted in part 1, we are natural beings. The material foundations of our social existence are biological and ecological not intellectual. And whilst the human species depends absolutely upon ‘life on earth’ (nature) for its continued existence, life on earth in general does not depend upon the existence of human species, for its continued existence.

My own researches for a new study I am completing indicate to me that for thousands of years life on earth has been studied from the perspective of the human species; but the human species has rarely (if ever) been seriously studied from the perspective of life on earth. The intellectual reversal of the real status of humanity as natural human beings I consider is something of a historically based narcissistic exceptionalism spun out of the human ability to think and imagine itself as something above and beyond nature and unattached to natural parameters. However, that intellectually created virtual world was constructed prior to gaining a more modern level of understanding which fully recognises the dependence of humanity upon life on earth (or nature) – in all its manifold interdependent forms.
Marx, got as close as was possible duing the 19th century to understanding the reliance of humanity upon the totality of ‘nature’ but the interdependence of life on earth was not adequately understood or revealed then (or now) by the generic use of the term ‘nature’.

The continued repetition of the abstract concept ‘nature’ does not reveal anything of the inter-connected, inter-dependent and intricate web of life on earth. In actual fact the billions of life forms on earth and their interdependent life cycles that make up ‘nature’ is effectively obscured by never getting further than repeatedly using that convenient abstraction. It has taken almost two futher centuries of scientific research since Marx conducted his studies, to arrive at a more accurate understanding of the ecological interdependence of life on earth and humanities absolute dependence upon it at the cellular and microorganism level of sophistication and miniscule size. So whilst it is true that at one point Marx considered the Russian village subsistance commune might offer an alternative to the multiple alienations of capitalist based hierarchical mass societies, this 19th century suggestion of his needs to be treated with caution. For even when he wrote;

“..if the Russian intelligentsia (l’intelligence russe) concentrates all the living forces of the country to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune, the latter will soon develop as a regenerating element of Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist regime.” (Marx correspondence)

We cannot assume that the words “concentrating all the living forces to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune” represents a definitive break by Marx with the idea of a future  mass society form. How could it? The real biological and ecological evidence upon which to base such a complete reversal of anthropocentric exceptionalist thinking was almost completely missing in the late 19th century. Marx was, (as we all are), a product of the stage of socio-economic development then reached by the evolution of human life on earth. At the point in the trajectory of hierarchical mass society history that Marx was living through, the glaring negative affects of human productive activity upon life in general was restricted to particular parts of Europe and North America. In any case such dust-bowl, Aral Sea shrinking and river polluting, mass society effects seemed to be based upon callous or neglectful aberrations to the system of production. These rubbish dumps and discarded waste materials did not at the time manifest themselves as the general systemic affects globally generated by the entire profit based and turbo-charged hierarchical mass society system itself.

In fact even now, two centuries, later, this systemic pollution by so-called rogue producers ‘neglect’ and disregard for the environment is still the ‘common sense’ default understanding of millions of people – including large numbers of those intellectuals who claim to be influenced by Marx. Yet, the hierarchical mass society system by it’s original design and continuing purpose, is as a short term exploitative system of production, particularly in its latest capital dominated form. It is a form of human social organisation in which, since ancient Babylon and Egypt an elite have exploited and oppress the majority and nature, on the basis of a fiction that they are better, or considered more deserving, than the rest of life on earth and their own citizens.

However, the dire consequences for life on earth, as a whole, are gradually emerging from realising the effects of how the human species produces and reproduces itself biologically, socially and economically. The realisation is slowly dawning of how blatantly out of sync the human species is with how the biologically based system of life on earth has reproduced itself for billions of years. Yet this realization is still restricted to a few and of course in the life-time of Marx the climate changing, eco-destroying possibility of profit based production and consumption had not become a probability and so was not a defining issue. The most vitally important issue then was the alienating relationships between the human species within and between class based hierarchical mass societies. Therefore, when Marx wote;

“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself, the abstract citizen, and an individual human being – has become a species being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation….only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.”(Marx. Collected Works Volume 3, page 168.)

We need to acknowledge that this statement – as radical as it was in the 19th century – is now insufficient and needs a 21st century makeover and a crucial addition. This could be done by re-phrasing the first sentence and inserting the following clause (in bold) after the words “particular situation’; i.e. “…to ensure it’s own species well-being does not detrimentally affect the present and future well-being of all the other inter-dependent species of life on earth,” will human emancipation have been accomplished’. So that the essence of the above revolutionary-humanist perspective formulated by Marx in 1870 would now read;

“Only when real individual human beings think and act as species beings in their everyday life and organise their energies and abilities in a genuinely voluntary collective way to ensure their own well-being does not detrimentally affect the present and future well-being of all the other inter-dependent species of life on earth, will human emancipation have been accomplished and humanity have realised an evolutionary balanced potential.” (RR)

Hence, whilst I am convinced that Marx regularly needs defending from the negative distortions of his many detractors, (and I have done so repeatedly during my adult life) he should not be transformed into some now dead ancient guru whose ideas must be defended at all costs or positively distorted in order to make all his ideas seem relevant to the new set of circumstances, now facing humanity. Pursuing such a strategy is not a scientifically based attitude but a semi-religiously based one. Marx’s research ought not to be routinely ignored and then bought out to be used like a compass when anti-capitalists feel lost in unfamiliar intellectual territory. His Revolutionary-Humanist criticism needs to be understood, but also refreshed and replenished by reliable and confirmable new evidence. Sadly, some modern followers of Marx have become trapped in a post-Marx, dogmatic paradigm of ‘Marxism’ where the “masters” theories must be occasionally dipped into, mined for ‘gems’, dug out and dogmatically followed, regardless of unfolding reality.

Some of his current followers seem to think that a guru-like Marx gave us the absolute socio-economic truth about human life on earth, when in fact he was limited by circumstances and limited himself to providing important relative truths concerning the capitalist mode of production and its wider social and political manifestations. That itself was innovative, groundbreaking and valuable at the time and remains so. Nevertheless, the relative economic truth about the capitalist mode of production and its alienating social life that he provided was relative to the evidence he acquired during his life by his reading of history and economics and by the combined experience he had accumulated during his life time in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe. 

Sadly, the revolutionary programme and praxis Marx proposed in the ‘Theses on Feurebach’ and elsewhere, never got further than the dead ends that the Bolsheviks and Maoists took it. While the reformist left became the reformist centre and the post second world war generations of anti-capitalists became bogged down in sectarian squabbling and point scoring against each other rather than promoting a collective analysis of the egocentric and anthropocentric (Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, Maoist) vanguard model they were still promoting. However, in the meantime, planetary reality and the capitalist mode of production has substantially changed both qualitatively and quantitatively and so too must our ideas.

The experience of the Russian, Chinese and Cuban Communist Revolutions indicated that the hierarchical mass society model, even when controlled by those who were convinced they were following the ‘revolutionary’ ideas of Marx (or Engels) still remained hierarchical, still retained wage slavery and still treated nature as resources to be consumed indiscriminately and bought and sold as expendable commodities. Marx clearly knew the importance of some aspects of nature, (“land, the first condition of our existence” as he noted in ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’ ) as did many others, but he and his generation did not know the full extent of it, or the importance of the whole interdependent web of species life on earth needed by the human as well as by all other species. The planetary biosphere, including its air, water and land and all that lived within it and on it, was in previous generations considered to have a lasting – even eternal – stability, resource-wise.

For generations it appeared beyond the ability of human beings to disturb that life – supporting biosphere stability by anything they did or didn’t do. Indeed, that is still often the default position of the present day millions who base their denials of climate change and ecological extinctions on exactly that eternal type supposition. This is also the case with regard to those many humans who have a favourite species they wish to conserve but do not understand that the iconic Whales, Tigers or Pandas they favour also need the oxygen and food, provided by the mature plants and algae which are being destroyed or depleted by humanities ever increasing production and consumption – now on automated robotic steroids. Saving such iconic species requires saving all the planets species, particularly those at the base of supplying all the air we (and they) breath and the food chains we are all part of, such as the billions of insect larvae and plant seeds.

I suggest we revolutionary anti-capitalists and revolutionary-humanists need to free ourselves from the ideological confines experienced by and imposed upon our teachers – even the great ones – and begin working things out for ourselves. We need to commence and continue our own research and base it on the latest verifiable forms of evidence available to us. This evidence is much greater than was available to previous generations, we ignore it at the cost of seeing no further and perhaps understanding even less than our previous generations. The human brain is an amazing organ which is capable of examining evidence in detail in order to separate fact from fiction.  However, unfortunately the human brain is just as amazing at being used to invent evidence or distort it in order to turn elite preferred fictions into politically popularised facts. Consequently the task is to focus on the former and minimise the latter. In this regard Marx practiced what he once advocated in a letter to Arnold Ruge in 1843.

“I am speaking of a ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing, ruthless in two senses: The criticism must not be afraid of it’s own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be.” (Marx)

Marx included in the category of ‘the powers that be’ those of the religious, political, economic and social elites, their tame media supporters and even those he classified as ‘dogmatists’ and ‘crass socialists’ among the liberals, lefts and anti-capitalist sectarians. I suggest that the above quote is one of the many suggestions by Marx that remains entirely relevant and one which is well worth adopting however, uncomfortable it makes others feel.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024)