Going beyond capital has been a centuries old intellectual aspiration and its expression as such, can be dated theoretically from the 18th century period. Yet it still appears in almost the same form, like a stuck record continually going over the same notes and never developing the overall theme. It was that centuries old period which witnessed the publication of a series of economic analyses that finally identified the source of bourgeois wealth accumulation as being located in the increasingly cash-based ownership/control of the means of production. It became known as ‘capital’ and its system designated as capitalism, or the ‘capitalist mode of production’. One seminal two volume publication which comprehesively analysed this latest mode of production, based upon ‘capital’ was the ‘Wealth of Nations’ by Adam Smith.

This advance of bourgeois economic theory was followed by a more forensically orientated and a far more critical socio-economic study of the capitalist mode of production by Karl Marx, entitled ‘Das Capital’. It is from this latter publication that the intellectually based idea of going ‘beyond capital’ began to be articulated as a practical proposition, by Marx and a few more radical intellectuals. Moreover, for most anti-capitalist theoreticians and activists it was never just about going away from capitalism and leaving it behind, but for most anti-capitalist theoreticians and activists it was also about going forward toward something better. Within anti-capitalist thinking and activism there was always an aspiration to create a society of economic equality and ‘plenty’ exclusively for humans.  But at the same time with no clear idea of how those two aspirations could be achieved or sustained.

This anti-capitalist utopian trend along with anthropocentric fixations even appears occasionally in Marx. In Capital volume 3 writing of the limitations that capitalist mode of production imposes upon the means of production, he notes that “the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers. (Marx. Capital Vol 3.). Yes 200 years ago Marx, lacking a crystal ball, considered a constant expansion of the society of producers and what they consumed, would not be a  problem! If a week is a long time in politics, a century or two is ample time for many things, including assumptions to be superceded. Elsewhere, he suggests that industrial mass production methods, once collectively owned and freed of the profit motive will allow all human beings to have enough to fulfill their needs and leave sufficient spare time for everyone to become well-rounded, multi-talented individuals. However, this rose tinted tendency is most clearly expressed by Engels when he wrote that in a revolution;

“The proletariat seizes public power, and by means of this transforms the socialised means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property…..Socialised production on a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible….in proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the state dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organisation, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master – free. (Engels. ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Section III. Emphasis added. RR. )

Becoming lord’s over nature is an ambition as old as those elites ruling the so-called ‘civilisations’ of Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Persia etc. All previous hierarchical mass societies and their modes of production had class-based systems in which the means of producing essential use-values (food, clothing, shelter, tool etc) from the natural resources of the planet, had been owned or at least controlled by a governing or ruling elite class. This dominant ownership and control was previously exercised via elite ownership and control of the land, the water and the resources on them, in them, under them as well as access to the resources of the seas around them. It is important to understand, in this regard, that these planetary, inorganic and organic resources have always been the sources from which natural bio-chemical use-values have been extracted for the life-cycle support needs of all species from the most minute microorganisms to the largest mammals, and always will be.

Moreover, the fundamental survival relationship between all individual organisms and species of life on earth, has been via consuming other suitable organic species of nutrition, irrespective of the means of obtaining it by gathering or growing it. Therefore, all the millions of species of life on earth conceptualised as ‘nature’ are not actually contained in two separate realms of physical existence as ancient common sense imagined. Nature is simply one realm of biological existence which has evolved different modifications of the same cellular and multicellular inter-dependent units that all organic life is made up of. It is now a reactionary form of thinking to consider that the human species, individually and collectively, is merely a completely different species that lives on and within the planet’s biosphere. In reality, like all other species, we humans are a constantly re-cycled part of the organic and inorganic network of organisms and bio-chemical materials within this inter-related and inter-dependent, biologically active biosphere. Particularly with regard to the organic and inorganic materials we eat and those we absorb through our skin and lungs.

Yet the experience of previous generations of humans has never accumulated sufficient evidence to allow this leap in consciousness concerning life on earth. Previous generations only had enough evidence to mistakenly conclude that humanity was qualitatively different from the rest of the inorganic and organic material contained within and on the planet. Therefore, since ancient historical times, the relationship of humans and other forms of life on earth, were concieved as a case of us and them. Consequently, the dualistic distinction between humanity and nature, was embodied in the ancient religions and secular philosophies alike. This crude and false intellectual bifurcation of the common biological structure of life on earth, (i.e. a God or gods made the first human beings and then made the animals and plants as food for humanity). Yet however crudely this imaginary dualism has been spun, it still remains embedded in the core of all  anthropocentric forms of thinking from the earliest times of hierarchical mass societies to the present 21st century ones.

Consequently, this biological dualistic conservatism is evident in practically every, social, political, philosophical, scientific, psychological and religious trend in existence. Hence humanities primary concern is about it’s own survival, and only has secondary ecological concerns about the condition of the biosphere and other species.  Which is why ecological concerns continue to be tacked on the end of humanities own species concerns – either as sincere or insincere afterthoughts. This dualistic phenomenon is even the case among the most radical examples of anti-system advocates on the political left, as numerous articles on this blog have repeatedly made clear. Nevertheless, they still keep surfacing and another has surfaced this month in the form of an interview with the co-author of a book who is advocating an ecommunist alternative perspective to other degrowth and green growth advocates. In the interview he asserted that to solve the ecological problems future societies tasks should include;

“Rationally mastering society’s metabolism with nature by collectively deciding what to produce (based on which social needs should be prioritised) does not mean we can avoid difficult decisions around capitalism’s legacy of environmental destruction. But rather than these decisions being made by the private power of capital — backed by governments whose central function is reproducing capitalist relations of production — it will be the producing class as a whole, having regained control over the means of production, which will work out proposals to settle these questions. They will do so while ensuring that three different objectives are met: fully satisfying fundamental social needs; democratising production; and seeking to establish a rational metabolism with nature.” (Esteban Mercatante. Interview in ‘Climate & Capitslism’. 25/7/25.)

Whilst the author of this (and other extracts which will follow) indicates an accurate grasp of some aspects of the capitalist mode of production, he does so from within a rigid anthropocentric paradigm of limited understanding. This tendency is revealed most starkly in the three different objectives that are set out in the last sentence of the extract above: i.e. a) fully satisfying fundamental social needs; b) democratising production; and c) seeking to establish a rational metabolism with nature. Anthropocentric focussed objectives such as these (and most other current anti-capitalist ones) are narcissistically concentrated upon just one species in our complex integrated life-support system contained and maintained within the earths biosphere. It amounts to a top-down tiered sequence of priorities; a) mass human socio-economic needs first; b) human democratic needs, second, and a rational metabolism with nature third and last.

Yet the first two objectives are absolutely dependent upon the third. The human species (and other species) as a whole are absolutely dependent upon the combined, interconnected and inter-dependent biological species interactions in the biosphere for maintaining its oxygenated air, the pollination of all photosynthetic plant-based complex food chains, the recycling of dead organisms and much else. It is obvious that the biosphere, could manage quite well without humanity, and did so for billions of years of biological evolution, but humanity could not exist at all without the biosphere, and for not very long without some notable key elements of it such as food, water, and shelter made available by multifarious biological organisms within it. If anything, the three objectives noted above should be completely reversed and establishing a rational metabolism with nature should now be prioritised. That has been an area of life on earth that has neglected for long enough. Even then such a reversal of the tiered sequence would be a necessary but still insufficient understanding of what is actually needed as I shall try to make clear.

Within all anthropocentric paradigms of thinking, there is clearly a reluctance to self-critically examine previous and current assumptions that have been borrowed or inherited from the past and which still await considerable correction. I suggest a similar, revolution in thinking that eventually overthrew the inaccurate, religious backed, anthropocentric, earth-centred astronomical paradigm, and introduced a sun-centered solar system within a Milky Way Galaxy, is urgently needed in mainstream socio-economic thinking. Many adherents of the inacurate anthropocentric intellectual paradigm of a human centred and dominated biological biosphere, are putting up a similar reluctant and reactionary resistance to 21st century evidence based knowledge and reality that the pontiff’s of religion and their acolytes did many centuries ago. Once again it is down to the few who dare to criticise the dominant ideologies of their own times, to pioneer an alternative paradigm.

Furthermore, the outmoded anthropocentrically obsessed anti-capitalist perspective also still operates with same abstract categories that were usefully developed almost two centuries ago by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, when they confronted the bourgeois economic elites on the elites own intellectual ground. In doing so they both used the bourgeoisie’s own economic categories against them, but those abstract categories are no longer useful and that particular economic battle has been won. Moreover, much has changed since then. For example the interviewed author states the following;

“In contrast, communism, as we understand it, has at its heart the transformation of labour and its relationship with nature. This is the cornerstone for recovering all the potential denied to labour by the alienated relations imposed on it by capital and, at the same time, for ending the abstraction of nature. These are the preconditions for moving from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom, which presupposes a balanced social metabolism.”(ibid)

The abstractions, labour, capital, nature, realm of necessity and realm of freedom may be still intellectually useful in considering and criticising bourgeois economic categories within a economic or philosophical debate, but these abstractions are an alien barrier to the further understanding of the general public, an understanding which is increasingly necessary and of which the working class are a significant part. Working people don’t relate to life in such abstract categories. All such abstractions have human characteristics and social reality deliberately removed from them. The struggle is now to put the real human beings back into the biological and social context and intellectual framework. The real content of the concept labour is ‘paid working class productive activity’. The content of the concept of nature includes all the species that inhabit and contribute to the habitable regions of the planet. The content of the concept of capital is the physically embedded material results of the past expended energy and skills of the working people who produced the raw materials from the organic species, and inorganic materials and crafted other raw materials into the tools and machines then used in further production.

The content of these abstract concepts in plain language could be liberating to working class individuals and groups encountering them but the bourgeois devised concepts themselves will be mostly confusing to those who are (and will continue to be) the ones facing the problems caused by the hierarchical mass society system. They are also the ones most likely to be motivated to consider changing this system, once they have understood its content rather than being constantly baffled or misdirected by unfamiliar and often nonsensical abstractions, such as “moving to a realm of freedom”, for example. What is the practical content of a “realm of freedom”, apart from nonsense? Life on earth in any form cannot be free from the need for sufficiently oxygenated air, unpolluted water, nutritious food, adequate shelter, supportive communities, not to mention not being able to be free from gravity, friction, thinking and speaking and much else, all of which require effort, patience, persistence, skill development and useful knowledge.

In this particular anti-capitalist example of anthropocentric thinking, the author, who seems at times to value Marx, includes the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s ideas of proposing planetary boundaries which he and they consider are an essential part of any transition from capitalism, he approvingly notes that;

“All up, the SRC sets out nine boundaries and a series of critical thresholds for each that should not be crossed to avoid accelerated deterioration with unforeseeable consequences for a “tolerable” — let alone desirable — human life.” (ibid)

Note that the primary objective again in this extract is anthropocentrically focussed on establishing a ‘tolerable’ or preferably a ‘desirable’ life for human beings. The billions of other species, in this imaginary future scenario presumably must adjust to what is left of the biosphere when humanity has “fully satisfied its fundamental social needs”, from it, or as stated later when the objective of “fully satisfying social needs” has been met. And just who will decide what these social needs will be and who will evaluate whether they have been fully satisfied or not, is not mentioned. This absence indicates that the whole perspective is an abstract top-down idealised intellectual construct conjured up by imagination.

These idealised abstractions do not even include or refer to ‘satisfying every human beings fundamental biological needs’, let alone the fundamental biological needs of a healthy species-rich future biosphere functionally able to remain so. The question of who chooses these boundaries and who would ensure, any adherence to them or who is to decide what constitutes a ‘tolerable’ or ‘desirable’ human life, is also avoided, but it seems in this perspective (as with so many other ‘Marxist’ vanguardist dogmatic proposals), it will not be according to Marx’s opinion. In considering many other 18th and 19th century top down, intellectually worked out, plans for the working class to implement, Marx on behalf of himself and Engels, wrote;

“The emancipation of the working classes, must be achieved by the working classes themselves. We cannot therefore, cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes” (M/E Selected Correspondence. Progress. Page 307.)

Although much of what Marx analysed and predicted has been outdated and superceded by the evolution the capitalist mode of production, its global reach and its ecologically damaging, impingement upon the biosphere, and the level of scientific inquiry it has produced, somethings do remain valid. I suggest that the essence of the above quotation by Marx is one that does remain valid. The working classes of the world are not simply biological units of labour-power or consumers of commodities as capitalist elites treat them, they are intelligent and adaptable human beings. Furthermore, they are the ones who directly and constantly interact with the biosphere and its organic and inorganic resources in the mass production of nutrition, clothing, shelter and the tools needed to fulfill those essential requirements.

They are also the ones, who because they are employed in this system to produce for profit, actually extract the least natural resources per head, from the biosphere and deposit least pollution, due to their own restricted consumption. By their current circumstances they are the least able group of citizens of hierarchical mass societies to moderate or cease production, move away from, counteract, or mitigate the problems emanating from modes of production which over-extract, over-produce and over consume the biospheres organic and inorganic resources.
They are also the ones most likely to support a possible change in the way the human species lives, produces, consumes and pollutes, providing their understanding of the current and future one is more fully developed. This should be the task of those with the time, the resources and the inclination to be facilitative activists.

I suggest the revolutionary task is not to produce endless abstractions and idealised plans for future workers to follow. The Russian based Bolsheviks, the China based Maoists and the National Socialists of Germany, Italy, and Spain have already done that in 20th century and led workers down those disasterous ‘vanguard’ led cul-de-sacs. The results being that many 21st century activists in that particular anti-capitalist tradition have no large-scale viable examples of alternative socio-economic systems to fight for. On a mass society system scale they only have partial symptoms to fight against, such as racism, sexism, fascism, ageism, gender identity etc., which however necessary are not sufficient. This is  because in campaigning to rid the existing liberal capitalist system of its more extreme alienations and contradictions,  they are doing nothing to replace the system and in effect their efforts – directed at the state and its elites – are logically based upon conserving it.

I suggest workers in general are not likely to want  imitate the labours of Sisyphus or to repeat the mistakes of the 20th century workers who trusted the Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Hitlerites, Mussolini and Franco-ites  and modern revolutionaries should be reminding them why they should not follow any other influencers than their own collective deliberations. As Marx noted a; revolution for the working class will be necessary, not simply because established ruling elites can only be removed from controlling working class lives and from their destructive control of the biological resources of nature, that way, but because only by being directly involved in carrying through a revolution can workers remove the ‘muck of ages’ absorbed from their previous processes of being submerged in bourgeois and petite bourgeois forms of alienating socialisation.

Every new generation of working people soon get to know in general that working for a system of exploitation and oppression, whether that system of exploitation is governed by aristocratic elites, religious elites, hereditory elites, political elites, military elites, socialist or communist elites, is unnatural and alienating. Yet part of the task from this latest particular anthropocentric perspective is focussed on “building a revolutionary force” (i.e. developing another anthropocentric revolutionary vanguard) to lead and guide the revolution and meanwhile to combat their so-called failings such as waiting for catastrophes to mobilise workers into becoming followers. Thus we read;

“One is a rehash of the old mechanistic catastrophism that certain anti-capitalist left sectors ascribe to any crisis (whether economic or ecological). Such crises are viewed as objective factors to help compensate for difficulties in the subjective terrain, that is, for building a revolutionary social force. Such currents have appeared throughout the revolutionary movement’s history. It is not surprising that the ecological crisis provides them with some fuel.” (ibid)

This sweeping dismissal of the possibility or probability of catastrophes occuring is also idealistic nonsense. Actual catastrophes of various kinds do occur, some are predictable and some are unavoidable, but they do enable people to respond and re-evaluate their thoughts about how things could (or should) be different. Moreover, unexpected or anticipated catastrophes do not always promote pessimism in general, but also promote preparation. Although pessimism concerning the hierarchical mass society system of human living whether governed by religious, military or secular elites, is increasingly widespread and with good reason.

But this particular author is concerned with a pessimism which hinders the building of a revolutionary force, not pessimism in general. For the task the authors have set themselves is to help “build a revolutionary social force” and we have already been informed that the primary purpose in this anthropocentric perspective is to institute a socio-economic system which will “fully satisfy the fundamental social needs of humanity”. This will be the main motivation; then improving ‘democracy’ within mass societies; and at some later point “establishing a rational metabolism with nature”.

The basic sequence and purpose has already been worked out in advance for workers to follow and perhaps may be required to fill in any missing details from a plan they have not been part of. What is being proposed here is not a workers led restoration of a natural rhythm of interaction with an ecologically balanced biosphere system, which is the only task that will actually ensure the long term future of human and non- human life on earth. What is being proposed is not even a working class led restructuring of high output mass consuming human societies. It is in essence just another regurgitation of the early 20th century revolutionary socialist or Communist vanguardist hierarchical mass society system in which workers will remain workers, managers will be recruited from among the workers, and will manage production and politically groomed intellectuals will govern the social system and maybe oversee the mitigation of the worst effects of human social production on the remnants of the biospheres ecological balance.

Sadly this is mostly a complete re-hash of the 19th and 20th century anthropocentric perspectives on revolution and is also completely idealistic in essence. That anthropocentrically devised imaginary process of top-down politically orchestrated socio-economic reform of the governance of hierarchical mass societies by parliamentary means or by mass civil uprising and the establishment of massive networks of communes to collectively govern large-scale mass production, is utopian. Even if this perspctive was somehow successful this process would not solve the imbalance of human mass societies extracting more from the biosphere, than the biospheres natural rate of species reproduction could replace.

It is the sheer mass of extraction from ‘nature’ as well as the rate of extraction which is increasingly problematic. A sufficiently large herd of goats can exhaust an entire fertile patch of land without having mechanical digging, cutting and processing tools. Without the profit motive, large scale, industrialised mass societies of human beings could still precipitate a real world ecological and climate crisis and create a real world replication of the fictional hunger games but with national or community wars replacing the annual lottery based culling of a few chosen ones to entertain the many. Which incidentally is what occurred in the form of the First and Second World Wars.

The really revolutionary perspective in the 21st century falls into two parts. The first part starts with recognising that it is not just the capitalist mode of production which needs abolishing but it is the hierarchical mass society form of human aggregation that, irrespective of the mode of production it utilises, has reached the limits of its capacity to either expand or continue at its present level. The second part is to advocate and where possible initiate small scale, local pilot schemes such as those of the Diggers and Dreamers projects in the UK, the Zapatista. in Mexico, and the Kurdish revolutionaries in and around Rojava.

The future of humanity – if it is to have future at all – is not a future socialistic version of an inter-planetary Star Trek Federation, who will ‘boldly go’ – and in ‘coming’ and  ‘going’ will trash the rest of the known universe. It will be small scale, localised, bottom up egalitarian, Diggers and Dreamers, Zapatista and Rojva type self-governing communes. Who from the start will put humane beneficial meaningful relationships with each other and with the rest of the amazing species in nature whose life-styles have evolved to jointly create suitable environments for each other.

Elite humanity, in all its political shades, left, right or center has led the human species into ecological and biological impasse. If not thoroughly revolutionised sooner rather than later the system will implode or explode in one place or another, with unforeseeable effects and consequences. This historical form cannot be saved by it’s own mass society efforts, if it could, it would have done so already. The current system could not even prevent more genocides after solemnly declaring “never again”. Neo-liberal capitalist societies cannot be turned around like a disciplined regiment of trained soldiers and marched in the opposite direction in order to undo what it has already done. Furthermore, there is no example of any historical change in the mode of production being initiated in such a top down, grand plan, orderly fashion. New modes of living and producing have always started with a few small groups of non-elite individuals and those initiatives that have proved successful have been voluntarily replicated by others. That is the fundamental revolutionary role to be played by the 21st century working classes.

As noted above, that new process has already been started in various places, revolutionary minded individuals need to take note of this, publicise it and encourage others and themselves to initiate their own versions of egalitarian, ecologically aware, species sensitive self governing communities. The revolution which is required is practical not theoretical and needs to respond to unfolding reality not to rhetoric or retrospection. As Marx noted with regard to a previous generation of scholars and psuedo-scholars who had illusions about the practicality of “pure thought”.
“They all imagine that they are weaving the web of of world history when as a matter of fact, they are merely spinning the long yarn of their own imaginings. (Marx. The German Ideology.)

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2025.)