Early on in his 19th century radical researches, Karl Marx, published an article in the form of a letter to his fellow editor Arnold Ruge, and after commenting that in his homeland Germany, ‘stupidity itself rules supreme’, he went on to state the following. That no one seemed to have ‘clear conception of what the future should be’. We can add that over 100 years later, there is still not much clarity, loads of stupidity and colossal cruelty everywhere. But back to Marx who then added;

“That, however, is just the advantage of the new trend: that we do not attempt to dogmatically to prefigure the future, but want to find the new world only through criticism of the old….But if the designing of the future and the proclamation of ready made solutions for all time is not our affair, then we realise all the more clearly what we have to accomplish in the present – 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 1843 emphasis added. RR.)

Marx took that ruthless criticism of everything quite literally and was not afraid to vigorously criticise the capitalists and their mode of production. Those who said they were on the side of the poor, the oppressed and the working classes, but who had presumed to teach long before they had adequately understood socio-economic issues themselves, were not spared either. For example, the philosopher, Hegel, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and dozens of economists in general, along with the particular authors of the Gotha programme became targets for his critical assesments. In addition, Proudhon, Bakunin, Duhring, Malthus and dozens of others, were in receipt of severe criticism for the inadequacies of their critical forms of thinking. But importantly he was rigorously self-critical as well. According to Engels, Marx never considered that anything he wrote was good enough for those he was hoping to assist with his researches on economics and politics. Marx was writing mainly in order to help those who genuinely sought to change the socio-economic system for the better.

It is interesting to note that in the almost 200 years since Marx was actively researching, the main body of sustained criticisms of Marx and his findings (and there have been many) have predominantly come from those who supported the capitalist mode of production in one way or another along with some who disagreed with his conclusion that a social and economic revolution was necessary in order to replace it. In the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, of those who identified with a revolutionary anti-capitalist perspective, only the Anarchist trend were severely critical of Marx. In contrast, from within the milieu that accepted Marx had made an outstanding and unrivalled contribution to understanding the history of modes of production in general and the capitalist mode of production in particular, there was hardly a hint of criticism of him or his theories.

There was also little or nothing critical of Marx coming from the self-styled Marxists, the Bolsheviks, the Trotskyists or from the academic left who made a professional living out of studying his works. This dirth of constructive criticism was probably for at least three reasons. First because few could find fault with his lengthy and detailed economic analysis of the things he studied and this important intellectual output became the strongest and most complete theoretical weapon against the vocal supporters of the capitalist mode of production. Second, Marx’s works were so detailed, complex and extensive that few admirers of Marx had made the time and effort to read enough of Marx to know if any, of his assumptions were wrong and which, if any, of the evidence sources he drew upon was unrelable or inaccurate. Third, there was insufficient reliable evidence about life on earth to contradict the prevalent anthropocentric assumptions. This means that from most anticapitalist perspectives, there has been an implicit assumption that the essence of what Marx wrote remained accurate and valid.

However, in the spirit of Marx’s advocacy of ‘a ruthless criticism of everything that exists, not fearing it’s own conclusions nor fear of any conflict with powers that be’ this means that a critical consideration of Marx’s research from within a revolutionary humanist perspectives is both legitimate and well overdue.
In previous articles I have dealt with the issue of ‘Marxists’ who have distorted Marx’s findings (e.g. In ‘Marxists versus Marx’) as well as pointing out the purely theoretical nature of his schema of workers revolution via civil war and the need to be led by a Revolutionary Workers Party. In this article I shall point out in more detail that Marx’s research and analysis was not just limited by the under developed scientific understanding at the time of his 19th century research, but also by the more general anthropocentric ideological assumptions that were shared among all classes and all religious, academic and philosophic disciplines. Marx was amazingly accurate, and diligent in his ruthless criticism (far more than most of his predecessors and contemporaries) as far as the intellectual and knowledge base at the time permitted. Nevertheless, what Marx and others knew at that time did not cover ‘everything existing’ for much was still to be discovered and fully understood.

What Marx and everyone else did know in the 19th century and later was clearly not enough to fully understand the ecological problems facing life on earth – as a whole. The knowledge available concerning life on earth at the time only allowed them to understand life on earth from a human centred perspective using human centred concepts and assumptions. Despite some tentative beginnings of seeing the ‘bigger picture’ of nature by Humboldt and others, a Giaia-focussed (i.e. a full bio-centric perspetive) of life on earth, was not even close to being developed. The following list of quotations from Marx illustrates this fact. For example, in Capital Volume 1, Marx wrote;

“The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state in which it supplies man with necessities or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature”. (Capital vol 1. Emphasis added RR)

Some of this extract remains reasonably correct, but some seemingly small assumptions Marx makes in light of modern ecological understandings, are undoubtedly wrong and these make them mistaken premises to base further deductions or intellectual constructions upon. This and other extracts to follow, reveal that Marx was clearly operating within an anthropocentrically based perception of the relationship between one specific biological species (i.e. the human species) and the rest of the millions of species making up the category – nature. The conclusion that the soil exists independently of ‘man’ (and the other species of life) is an evidence-deficient anthropocentric assumption. Animals, including humans (and insects and plants) are not independent of the soil but quite the opposite. First, the human species (along with many other plants, animals and insects) is absolutely dependent upon the soil and the microorganisms which exist within it. That is because it is this inter-dependence which supports the photosynthetic plant species basis of all food chains that humans, most animals and insects require several times per day.

Furthermore, these essential soil based biological organisms themselves are dependent upon many other species to obtain the organic nutrition their cells need. This source of nutrition is carried into the soil from the excrement and decomposition of other dead and decayed organic material dispersed in huge amounts on average at least once per day, from other species – including humans. So in fact the fertility of soil has always depended upon insects, plants and animals – including human animals – for its fertile condition. In addition, the microorganisms along with the photosynthetic plants are dependent upon absorbing inorganic gases and on using the suns inorganic radiant energy to produce oxygen and abundant plant material for the nutritional requirements of those whose excrement the soil and microorganisms rely upon to metabolically process.

Consequently in reality, rather than in out-dated 19th century theory and anthropocentric Giaia blind assumptions, there is no independence, between humans and ‘nature’ (i.e. the rest of the millions of species in the biosphere) whose interactive Nutritional, Metabolic, Growth, Reproductive, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) biological processes, are obscured by the habitual and unscientific use of the abstraction – nature! Indeed, there is an existential inter-dependence between all species indirectly, and with many other species directly and also between inorganic radiant and gaseous material along with mineral material and the bio-chemical based organic material. To point this out and emphasise it is not philosophical nitpicking, but a reasonably accurate statement of the crucial level of modern biological and ecological understanding which has now become necessary to comprehend how life on earth functions and how banal it has become in the 21st century to focus on just one or two aspects of its interconnected whole. This understanding includes the recognition that within the earths biosphere this biological matrix of life has existed and evolved over billions of years and this inter-dependent reality is still being obscured and ignored generally by the habitual use of the abstract classification – ‘nature’. Marx continues;

“Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs adding stature to himself…” (Capital Vol. 1 ibid)

Here again we have the concept of an abstraction (nature) being considered as a separate entity to humanity and thus was viewed by Marx as an organ of the human species that humans have annexed to their own bodily organs.  Marx suggested that the ‘riddle of history could be solved’ on the basis of overthrowing the capitalist mode of production and instituting  anthropocentric equality and democracy, but clearly much more is needed to solve the problems caused by hierarchical mass societies. Marx could only be suggesting the above, if the reality of ecological interdependence was unknown or being ignored. At best the real relationship of humanity to nature was being viewed upside down. Humans are a species of organism that evolved within nature and is absolutely dependent upon a complex, integrated organic spectrum of life on earth. It is not the organisms of the biosphere which which are being turned into organs of humanity, it is humanity which is using its evolved organs (brains and hands) to over extract and over consume the biological system which its own existence and evolution depends upon.

The dualistic conceptual framing of one extremely subjective species (us) treating all other species as objects (instruments) of production to exploit, mirrors the elites treatment of working people as objects (instruments) of production (labour power) to also be exploited. Characterising life on earth in this way clearly indicates that Marx was operating from within an anthropocentric focused intellectual tradition which had long been universal even though that universality was internally fragmented into differing and aggressively competing political, national, religious and ethnic versions of the one Homo-Sapien species.

The fact is however that it has long been overwhelmingly known that the human species is a single species and it has be known since the 20th century, that it is an integrated and inter-dependent part of the biological matrix of life on earth. As noted continually using the ‘common sense’ abstraction ‘nature’ routinely and problematically obscures the detail and inter-dependence of the multi-species biosphere and allows this living reciprocal inter-dependence to be largely discounted and ignored. Therefore, although Marx and probably every 19th century gardener of any reasonable ability, would have known that good soil needs manure and decomposing organic material, the exact interdependent biological and cellular activity and its universal microscopic Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic structures would have been unknown and therefore missing from their intellectual musings. Marx again;

“The earth itself, is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour.” (ibid)

It would be more accurate to say that labour as work (i.e. the biological multi-cellular effort of species, in order to locate and obtain their life-cycle needs) is a function of the biology of nature, although the abstraction ‘nature’ would still serve to confuse the issue. We should note here that from within the limited 18th and 19th century understandings of life on earth that whilst the earth itself (the planet and its biosphere) was reasonably well understood as a  series of astronomical objects, the fact that on its surface had evolved a self replicating, inter-dependent biological system, was not. That the planets surface liquids, gases, minerals and proteins had some how combined to become self-replicating, biologically based, ecologically integrated, and inter-dependent organisms in a holistic system, was not even a hypothesis; so all the species were treated as God created separate, independent species. So the fact that in reality, life on earth is one system in which the earth bound organic entities are not only entirely dependent upon each other, but are also dependent upon the inorganic minerals, gases and radiant energy of the solar system, was not being considered. (Although Engels in an 1875 letter recognises a limited interdependence of soil and manure but then classified it as a onesided and therefore incorrect perspective.) To classify this complex integrated matrix of organic species and internal and external inorganic material inputs as an instrument of the labour of one of its species – humanity – is a form of anthropocentrism writ large.

In other words by means of this ideological framework, the entire earth was (and still is) being viewed by those who still subscribe to this distorted way of viewing life on earth, as a ‘possession’ and ‘instrument’ of humanity. Such ancient imaginary separation of humanity and nature also gives rise in the 20th century to a fantasy of humans colonising and terraforming other planets. The fact is that it was the complex biology of ‘nature’ that eventually produced humanity, so the idea that humanity can eventually produce the biological complexity of nature on another planet when humanity cannot even prevent the continued extinction of essential biological species here on earth is fatuous. This anthropocentric intellectual inversion and distortion of biological reality stems from the fact that in the bourgeois era, work, including paid work, (i.e. labour) appears as an ideological construct within bourgeois economic theory, and therefore is considered as having a universal material reality, with no insurmountable limits. This anthropocentric assumption has inverted the actual relationship between biology in general and the particular biological form of one of the millions of inter-dependent biological species.

In contrast, a 20th and 21st century level of geological and biological understanding of life on earth, suggests that the soil was initially an inorganic compound of various ground up solid materials, which over billions of yearly planetary orbits, eventually became the recipient of dead and decaying life forms, which therefore added, organic materials to the mineral materials which had been reduced by weather actions into a relatively fine particle top layer. This fine top layer over millions of years then became habitat for and nutrient source for micro organisms, plants and fungi which all added and mixed organic materials to the original proto soil by their activity and deaths. Thus soil became in turn the habitat and nutrition source for an additional layer of larger plants, insects and animals, both surface and burrowing, all adding even more variety and organic richness to its composition. Yet with the focus of anthropocentric research almost exclusively fixed upon humanity, Marx drew the following conclusion.

“The labour-process resolved as above into it’s simple elementary factors, is human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to human requirements; it is a necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the everlasting Nature imposed condition of human existence and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase. It was therefore, not necessary, to represent our labourer in connection with other labourers; man and his labour on one side, Nature and its materials on the other, was sufficient. (ibid)

This focus on the simple elementary factors of human labour processes signals that this is a consistent and exclusively anthropocentric paradigm of thinking that Marx and everyone else were mired in during that period. Even the best of humanity, through a mixture of ignorance and arrogance, has imagined it has gone beyond the realm of ‘nature’ and entered the realm of ‘mankind’, which, as we have just read is almost universally considered separate from nature. According to this ‘left’ branch of anthropocentric ideology, it will be Sociology (or socialist ideas) that will determine the future of life on earth, not Biology.  And of course, the anthropocentric paradigm is a cultural habit of thinking that many people are still hopelessly mired in. As Engels noted; “we are all influenced more or less by the intellectual environment we mostly move in”; and I suggest some are more influenced than others.  This anthropocentric ideological paradigm of thinking is also reflected in how that 19th century generation interpreted the pre-history of the human species.

For example the relatively modern concept of property was projected backward and extended to well before the era in which natural resources began to be treated as belonging to either individuals or collectives. Categories of communal property ownership of natural resources are still being imagined to have existed in pre-historical periods when Homo-Sapiens in relatively small bands were continually moving from place to place (gradually across continents) on foot with the little they wanted to carry. And at a time when the few implements they needed could be easily constructed at every temporary place they stopped over at, ‘traveling light‘ was a reality consistent with their mode of production  as well as becoming a phrase in a 1960’s pop song.

The idea of property and rights, presuppose a settled existence and a social system in which the natural social freedom to eat, drink, rest and move about, was being or had been curtailed. Social and economic Rights only need to be asserted or protected when the restriction of certain activities (or forms of thinking) are being imposed. And those socially imposed conditions originally came about in some isolated places several thousand years ago. Concepts such as ‘Rights’ and ‘Property’ ownership have no consistent material basis in pre-settled human societies. The natural ‘usage’ of natures resources for food, clothing and dwelling is the only applicable term to accurately describe most hunter-gatherer and pastoral peoples relationships to nature. Even the term ‘customary usage’ would not always apply, because some hunter-gatherers, did not continually return to the same location but gradually spread across the continents, and seas. So when Marx in the Grundrisse defines the concept of ‘property’ as representing;

“…the relation of the working (producing or self-reproducing) subject to the conditions of his production or reproduction as his own.” (Marx. Grundrisse.)

He presents no evidence to substantiate that the concept and practice of ownership of nature or of the objects gathered from natural resources pre-dated settled agricultural based communities – because there is none. If he is referring to pre-history he has taken for granted the later more modern assumption, that what humans take or make from nature has always been viewed as their own. This is a bourgeois assumption and not a fact applicable to all modes of production. The recorded history of colonial conquests in Africa, North and South America and Oceana indicate that no indigenous communities – when first encountered – could grasp that human beings could and should own land and property. Even the routine usage of land and natural resources which in some places had extended over generations was never refused to other human groups or fenced off to prevent animals passing through. Even small personal items were frequently shared and gifted away as presents.

Nevertheless, despite these historical knowledge limitations, Marx, at certain points comes pretty close to noting the essential connection between humanity and natural resources, but not the multi-species inter-relationships in general, nor the relationship between the essential species rates of reproduction and the increasing rates of human consumption of them. He comes closest to the dependence of humanity upon nature in the economic notes he made whilst preparing material for the third volume of Capital which Engels edited after his death. The edited notes in Capital Vol 3 chapter 37 in particular point out that the fertility of nature sets the average or lower limit of necessary production required for personal and community subsistence, whilst the stage of development of the productive forces determines the upper limit of surplus production. This and any gap between the two rates of course, applies to any ancient or modern or future mode of production, developed by humanity.

However, the implications of an exceptionally high development of the productive forces which can extract natural resources faster than the reproductive rate of the key species needed for subsistence does not feature in any of the three volumes of Capital nor in the extra three volumes on surplus-value, by Marx. Even though the term Nature is frequently given the importance of a capital letter, and a repeated recognition that human life depends upon nature, this is purely a formal intellectual recognition with no real practical understanding of the biological inter-dependence of cellular and multi-cellular life on earth. So how this natural interaction can be adversely effected by over extraction and over consumption, was not addressed by Marx or by anyone else of that period or later. Nor is it being sufficiently addressed in the 21st century either. It is particularly neglected by those who think that the ongoing ecological crisis is primarily a problem of global warming and climate change – caused by petro-carbon emissions. Thinking that this excessive energy part of the problem can be solved by full a scale transfer to electrical power for production stems from the same narrow anthropocentric ‘us’ and ‘them’ perspective noted above.

Clean air and 100% electrical power, cannot and will not slow down human production in general or production in particular industries. Production to satisfy the needs, demands and expectations of the members of global hierarchical mass societies will still require the extraction and consumption of far more than the particular extraction and consumption of coal and oil. Whatever the source of energy for production, the relationship between hierarchical mass society communities and nature requires that multiple organic species be extracted, processed, consumed, and waste materials to be dumped or processed. Food, clothing, housing, vehicles, many consumer goods and entertainment materials are not made from coal or oil, but are made by power tools mass extracting inorganic materials and organic species that are actually essential for a balanced biosphere. Future elites will still want proportionally more than the average citizen, and even if the masses remain extremely poor, the minimum needs of billions of poor will still amount to natural species being extracted at a rate beyond their capacity to reproduce themselves.

It is an obvious fact that an entire forest with its plant, insect and animal residents with their continual activities of recycling of debris, gases and nutrients, which took hundreds of years to mature, can be be cut down in a year using electrical chain saws and tracked electric vehicles. Even if forests are replanted (which currently is not always the case), it would take more centuries before new plantations were again absorbing a similar amount of carbon and nitrogen and delivering similar amounts of nutrition to its inhabitants and oxygen to the atmosphere. The growing ecological crisis is about far more than energy and climate, and its solution is about far more than the anti-capitalism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Mao’setung. The concluding phrase Marx uses, ‘man and his labour on one side, Nature and its materials on the other, was sufficient’, for his purposes, confirms this 19th century limitation, extended across all classes. And with regard to such excessive extractions of natural resources, by the ever increasing productivity of the productive forces of humanity, Marx also saw only positive potentials. He reasoned that;

“The means – unconditional development of the productive forces of society – comes continually into conflict with the limited purpose, the self-expansion of the existing capital. The capitalist mode of production is, for this reason, a historical means of developing the material forces of production and creating an appropriate world market…” (Marx. Capital Vol 3 page 244/245. Emphasis added. RR.)

In other words whilst Marx at that 19th century stage of understanding was analysing the ever increasing productivity of profit driven commodity production and its relative overproduction, he considered that removing the profit motive would allow the “unconditional development of the forces of production”. This anthropocentric focus for his social ideas remained throughout and at the end of a speech delivered at a Congress of the First International in 1872, Marx, declared the following;

“No I will not withdraw from the International, and all the rest of my life will be, as have been all my efforts of the past dedicated to the triumph of the social ideas which – you may be assured – will lead to the world domination by the proletariat. (Marx. 1872)

As noted, Marx was not alone in this anthropocentric fixation and dualistic bifurcation of life on earth and the general lack of an understanding of the functioning of the biosphere meant there was no regard for protecting the inter-dependent and inter-connected complex biology of life on earth as a whole. And that lack of understanding is still general and frequently wilfully so. Sadly, every thinker, intellectual or non-intellectual, revolutionary or conservative in the past and ever since have shared that knowledge limitation together with a socially determined and developed anthropocentric fixation. To indicate that this fixation is truly historic, what follows is a random selection of anthropocentric thinking from ancient to modern.

Aristotle.

“Everything in nature is created or built with an end or purpose in mind.” (Aristotle)

Implications. As far as we have evidence for, only one species of thinking reasoning organism exists and that is the human species.

Hegel.

“As it is, the being of nature does not correspond to its concept; its existing actuality therefore has no truth; …But because even in this element, nature is a representation of the idea, one may very well admire in it the wisdom of God.” (Hegel. Philosophy of Nature. Proposition 193)

Implications. The actuality of Nature (species) have no truth – only human ideas are true.

Lenin.

“Communism is the higher productivity of labour – compared with that existing under capitalism – of voluntary, class-conscious and united workers employing advanced techniques.” (Lenin Complete Works Volume 29 page 427.)

Implications. Higher productivity and advanced techniques will allow us communists to extract more natural resources and produce more stuff than the capitalists ever did – comrades!

Trotsky.

“The development of the social division of labour, on the one hand, and machine production on the other, has led to the position that nowadays the only cooperative body which could utilise the advantages of collective production on a wide scale is the state” (Trotsky. ‘Results and Prospects. New Park page 99.)

Implications. The collectivist state with the development of labour and machine production will allow collective production on a wide scale.

Hannah Arendt.

“The distinction between man and animal runs right through the human species itself: only the best (aristoi), who constantly prove themselves to be the best, and who ‘prefer immortal fame to mortal things’ are really human; the others, content with whatever pleasures nature will yield them, live and die like animals.” (Hannah Arendt. ‘The Human Condition.’ )

Implications. Prove you are the ‘best’ of the human species and you will achieve immortal fame.

Marcuse.

“Philosophy had never ceased to claim the right to guide man’s efforts towards a rationally mastery of nature and society or to base this claim upon the fact that philosophy elaborated the highest and most general concepts for knowing the world” (Herbert Marcuse ‘Reason and Revolution’. Chapter 2)

Implications. Thinking by philosophers is the highest form for knowing the world and rationally mastering nature.

Alan Woods.

“The struggle to understand the world was closely identified with humankind’s struggle to tear itself away from the mere animal level of existence, to gain mastery over the blind forces of nature, and to become free in the real, rather than legalistic, sense of the word. This struggle is a thread running through the whole of human history.” (Page 26. The History of Philosophy’. A Marxist Perspective’. Alan Woods. Pub. September 2021.)

Implications. Gaining mastery over nature and becoming ‘free’ of an animal type existence is part of humanities struggle.
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To recap and review. In reality, all the organic materials of nature are living, reproducing, inter-dependent essential biological species which cannot in fact be reduced by ideas to simple elementary factors of human production without ignoring or abstracting away these complex inter-dependent ecological relationships between species. It is these multiple, mutual interactions which are the relationships creating the biosphere upon which the life and the labour processes of humanity (and all other biological organisms) ultimately depends. Any process of abstracting away the inter-dependent biological conditions and relationships upon which all life on earth depends, in pursuit of understanding how one or more particular species survives is bound to be missing some crucial pieces of how the jigsaw of life on earth, functions and how it continues to exist. Marginalising or failing to recognise the full extent of the real, if often invisible to the eye processes, or failing to include any aesthetically objectionable species that contribute to the biosphere’s functioning can lead to a serious failure to understand the full processes of life on earth.

The hidden and often unknown processes that the human labour processes have been extracting from and excessively consuming at a local level since such hierarchical mass societies were created, was an act of unintentional ignorance. Past generations cannot be blamed for a lack of this modern level of understanding, even though they can be censured for wilful inhumanity and the perpetuation of repeated wars and genocides. However, contemporary generations can be censured for both, because the evidence is now publically and freely available. In the past, the often dire effects of this historic localised over-extraction of natural resources was overcome by a constant expansion and relocation of settlement extraction by embracing new pristine territories within the fertile regions of the planet.

First hierarchical mass societies expanded throughout the near and middle east, leaving exhausted soils, depleted forests, polluted and exhausted localities to either slowly recover or to become deserts over time. Next they expanded throughout the Mediterranean coastal rim and Europe, with essentially the same results. Third, such societies were then expanded by trade and colonisation to the far east and then to the entire globe. The adolescent fantasy of looking beyond earth to colonise or mine planets for minerals, is just that and resources expended in that direction are sterile and wasted. Extra terrestrial planetary territories have gases and minerals but as far as organic life goes – they are sterile. They have no existing organic resources nor a biosphere to support life as we know it. Moreover, it has taken billions of years to become established even on favourably situated goldilocks planets such as earth. Those who like to imagine  that an alternative future by the colonisation of Mars or other planets could be possible, are not using the rest of their evolved neo-cortex very effectively.

There are no longer any vast areas of untouched resources to exploit, and the self-recovery of extinct, and endangered, species and polluted land, water and seas, has been routinely limited by the frenetic activity of the hierarchical mass society modes of production. All this is a direct and indirect result of the hierarchical mass society system of human aggregation and the aggressive competition for natural resources that this form created and has sustained over generations. The ideological expression of this historic and contemporary form of dysfunctional human aggregation has been an anthropocentric, narcissistic, self-regard in conjunction with secondary forms of identity such as religion, nationality and ethnicity which completely avoid, or  purposefully deny, recognising the essential biological identity and continuity of humanity as one species.

To that ancient historic anthropocentric narcissism has been added, in the last century, an increasing level of commodity and travel fetishism. The accumulatively effects of these factors are hastening a tragic erosion of the self-sustaining biosphere which just may be the only such system in the entire galaxy. What a tragedy it would be, if after billions of years of evolution, many more (or most) of the amazing and probably unique bio-chemical life forms on earth are to be destroyed by the combined actions and inactions of one of the most advanced of those species who at the moment cannot be bothered to use it’s amazing intelligence and communication systems to end its addiction to one particular form of social aggregation – the hierarchical mass society – and create an alternative Gaiai-centric one.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2025.)