In the relative position the reader sequences these two simple dualistic patriarchal triads lies the difference between humanity continuing with ruling class ideologies and eventual social collapse or adopting a Gaia-centric future for life on earth and ensuring a positive evolution for the human species. In the social evolution of the hierarchical mass society form of human aggregation, the practical form of securing the biologically repeated phases of all species existence – Nutrition – Metabolism – Growth – Reproduction – Ageing – Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) has disregarded the effect of humanities essential (N-M-G-R + A-D) processes upon those same biological processes which are essential for all other species. The ideological framework reflecting this narcissistic human species obsession with itself is best understood as Anthropocentrism, in which a sociological understanding of life on earth has been progressively superimposed upon an embryonic biological understanding, until it has inverted the actual reality of life on earth.

In the last few articles on this blog, I have drawn attention to the fact that across the whole intellectual spectrum of humanity, despite its considerable diversity, the many various thought processes have nevertheless all been dominated by this overall anthropocentric fixation. The many religious, political, scientific, technological, economic, sociological and biological disciplines, that have been constructed since ancient hierarchical mass societies were created, have all been developed within an overall anthropocentric focussed paradigm. It is this overall anthropocentric myopia concerning life on earth – as a whole – that has distorted the research and findings of every academic discipline studied, throughout history. In the previous article, ‘Marx and life beyond capital’, I produced numerous quotes from Marx’s writings to provide evidence that as radically anti-capitalist as they were, Marx’s thought processes were still formed  within the limitations imposed by two historically determined factors; the first factor being an anthropocentric focussed paradigm of thinking; and the second factor, being a 19th century lack of detailed biological and ecological knowledge. As a reminder, I include one of those quotes here.

“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.” (Marx. Capital Volume 1. Emphasis added. RR.)

Clearly there is an exchange of matter between nature and man, that’s what keeps humans alive, but what is missing in the above extract is the fact that the exchange of organic matter is also a multi-species exchange within the biosphere, between all species in one form or another. Simply using the term ‘nature’ as an abstraction, is problematic. Its simplistic use has abstracted away all the inter-connected and inter-dependent complex species detail of this collective metabolic exchange. Therefore, in reality life on earth has never been a case of “man and his labour on one side and Nature and its materials on the other”. That is a one-sided anthropocentric based formulation which has reduced the complex multi-species interconnected dialectical reality of ‘life on earth’ to a simple and erroneous religious style dualism; a secular parallel to ‘God created Man. Nature in the form of its millions of interdependent species, is one planetary based organic and inorganic biologically integrated system and it is this complex dynamic balance that keeps all species alive, almost irrespective of the human mode of production being practiced within it. In that previous article I then added the following comment which was condensed from all the extracts I have previously used of Marx’s, to illustrate this almost universal  anthropocentric limitation.

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 that the human species, has gone beyond the realm of ‘nature‘ and entered the realm of ‘mankind‘, which, as we have just read is considered as a separate realm from nature, and is almost universally considered in this way. According to this nonsense ‘left’ branch of anthropocentric ideology, it will be Sociology (politically expressed in the form of socialism) that will determine the future of life on earth, not the wellbeing of Biology and  its ecological interconnectedness. 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.” (See ‘Marx and Life beyond Capital’. RR. Critical -mass.net. August 2025)

In view of such erroneous conclusions that human socially aware intellectualism and skills can overcome most of the planetary constraints of physics and biology, it has become time to critically confront the intellectual and scientific environment most post Second World War anti-capitalist individuals have grown up within. It is time to refute and undermine the anthropocentric anti-capitalist paradigm based upon 19th century scientific understanding and to contrast it with the scientific evidence now at our disposal in the 21st. If the most radical anti-capitalist theories and practices, in the critical traditions of 19th and 20th century anarchism and the revolutionary-humanist ideas of Marx were also determined by and limited within the common anthropocentric paradigm, then in the 21st century simply regurgitating 19th century based knowledge and socio-biological evaluations constitutes a serious miscalculation.

Moreover, if this is the universal perspective of the entire human species, then how much more handicapped are those whose thought processes are motivated from a pro-capitalist paradigm, in solving anything to do with life on earth? The answer, is clear. All evidence gathered about the world we live in and the various interpretations of this evidence to date is almost completely determined and limited by the dominant anthropocentric fixation shared by its intellectual producers and their literate consumers. The only response from the pro-capitalist perspective nationally, regionally and globally is more of the same – increase production by all technical and scientific means possible in order to – reduce the tensions and contradictions within the inherited human social sphere of hierarchical mass societies. But we now know that this so-called social realm solution of more and more productive consumption of the organic and inorganic resources of the planet is simultaneously reducing the viability of the complex biologically integrated ecological balance of the entire planetary biosphere.

It needs to be emphatically stated that via a mixture of anthropocentrically derived arrogance and ignorance, elite humanity has long imagined that it has exited the ‘crude‘ biologically determined realm of ‘nature‘ and entered the sophisticated sociologically determined realm of ‘mankind‘, where everything that can be imagined is imagined to be technically or scientifically possible. This includes imagining that nature can be controlled and manipulated on a mass scale without damaging or destroying (in part or in whole) the integrated, inter-dependent matrix of biological life on earth. Of course that imaginary perspective of going beyond or improving upon natures evolutionary biological structure, is just a load more of arrogant and ignorant nonsense. When examined diligently and less arrogantly, it is life on earth as a whole (i.e. nature) which is sophisticated to such a degree that humanity cannot even fully understand its integrated complexity yet, let alone get near to replicating or  replacing it.

Compared with the biologically determined, self-replicating Prokaryotic and Eukariotic cells, in their single or multi-cellular associations, anything produced by the human species, even at it’s most intellectual and highly skilled levels, is crude and counter-productive and not at all self-reproductive. Even the most sophisticated mechanical or electrical instruments or contraptions devised by humanity need external power sources, require constant external servicing, constant adjustments, running repairs, and eventual a manufactured replacement. What the deepest dive of the most sophisticated submersibles humanity has created, at enormous cost in time, materials, labour power and energy sources, any average single Humboldt Squid or Whale can exceed every 24 hours on just a stomach full of dead or living flesh. It is the same with the most sophisticated expensive flying machines that humanity can create. Millions of moths, butterfles or birds can fuel themselves and navigate across continents and oceans on frugal morsels of sugary nutrition and replicate themselves by reproduction once there or when they return.

Superficially, from an anthropocentric perspective, privileged humans leaving the earths atmosphere by rocket may seem more sophisticated than anything biology can accomplish, but it is not. Space can only be visited by temporarily taking crucial parts of nature, air, food, water and energy with them, and which needs earth bound biology to make it available in the first, second and third place. On every metric, in their single or multi-cellular forms, species of life on earth exceed and excel what whole communities of humans cannot even come anywhere near replicating. The tragedy is that the elite in the form of naturalists, educators, philosophers, politicians, scientists, economists and theologians, past and present, have managed to convince the thousands of middle and working class citizens of hierarchical mass societies, both ancient and modern, that this ‘man has conquered, and controls nature’ anthropocentric view of life on earth is a ‘reality based’ one when in fact it is purely a ‘socially’ constructed one.

How powerful the socialisation of the intellectual potential of human populations has been, is demonstrated by the fact that every radical intellectual – even those opposed to the latest capitalist based hierarchical mass society forms – have had their frontal lobes and much else, fully saturated by this same anthropocentric paradigm of thinking. The extent of this tragedy is revealed by how the left in general, and the anti-capitalist left in particular, are as yet unable to discard outmoded 19th century theories of social reform or social revolution and relocate any legitimate humanist egalitarian aspirations they have to be resolved by incorporating them into a Giaia-centric and biologically focussed theory and practice.

As was indicated above and in previous articles, even the most astute and forensically attentive anti-capitalist and intellectual champion of the oppressed masses, Karl Marx, was not able to dispense with the false inverted dualistic relationship of Man first and Nature second, rather than Nature first and Man a much later and as yet extremely fallible product of nature; or preferably Nature first and the Human species much, much later. This latter formulation would at least reinstate the frequently irreplaceable, but frequently marginalised  biological role of the female reproductive agent of species evolution. Moreover, Marx’s many 21st century ‘disciples’ and followers have not even fully caught  up with Marx’s immense level of research let alone advanced beyond his 19th century imposed limitations.

But the above is not the only aspect of the tragedy effecting the human species, when it commenced its career of forming hierarchical mass society aggregations and physically eliminating other such rival aggregations, human and non-human. This is because, those taking up this form of socio-economic association, not only lost their natural  direct existential attachment to the rest of the natural species surrounding them, but also lost much of their natural socio-biological attachment to those of their own species within their own and other hierarchical mass society forms. The natural biological female reproductive partners of Homo sapien males prior to hierarchical mass societies, became subordinate units of domestic and agricultural labour (effectively slaves) to specific males, within them.

Other hierarchical mass society communities of the human species, became episodic competitors and oppressed labour slaves rather than friends and neighbour’s of other human groups. By means of wars and conquests for excessive control and consumption of natural resources on an increasingly mass society scale, individual men, women and children also became domestic, industrial and sex slaves of the conquering elites. As a consequence the natural biological essence of humanity – as one highly intelligent (!) biological species – was practically and intellectually distorted into the unnatural socially created categories of classes, occupational categories, religious denominations and land-based nations, which were then channelled by hierarchical structure, elite influence and compulsion into competition, disputes and wars of elimination between each other.

Intellectually, the hierarchical mass society structure of everyday living by regarding nature as material for processing was codified and solidified into sociological ideas and these became (and remain) categories of thought superimposed upon biological realities. Elite imagination and carefully selected evidence were combined in order to rationalise and excuse what no other natural species of life on earth had, or has needed to do – exterminate it’s own and other species in mass numbers for the material benefit a privileged elite. The elites historic control, manipulation and exercise of power over education, culture and science has managed to impose that ideology they formulated in arrogance and ignorance upon the rest of their ‘subjects’ until it is now almost impossible to encounter a morsel of critical opinion that is not permiated with anthropocentric sociological assumptions of multifarious kinds.

And, as indicated, that anthropocentric paradigm is firmly entrenched and emanates from both the originators as well as the followers of the numerous anti-capitalist sects and tendencies as well as from the ruling classes. Consequently, these revolutionaries and reformists currently exist for no other purpose than to compete with each other in a ‘battle of ideas’ and imaginings, and which the masses are expected to choose one tendency among them and then to loyally follow these intellectuals less critically than a flock of sheep would follow a shepherd. Note well this battle of left sects is a left competition not between the practical implementation of some real world socio-economic alternatives to the current capitalist anthropocentric mode of production, but between which personifications of left anthropocentric ideology have sounded most plausible in a verbal or written debate.

Then they,  like Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao and other plausible sounding males, would hope to become the future hierarchical leaders of suffering humanity within yet another hierarchical mass society form. In the 21st century, this hierarchical mass society form is to be newly designated as ‘green’ and ‘socialist’ instead of ‘capitalist’ or ‘communist’. But implicitly and explicitly these designations amount to just another change in name of hierarchical mass societies, without altering their hierarchical mass society form or function. Of course, that fantasy future socialism of a left anthropocentric imagination is not going to happen because not only are the current elites too powerfully ensconced and militarily protected to be overthrown, but in reality intellectual ideas do not change social reality.

Indeed, in reality, change occurs in the opposite sequence. It is social reality, rather than vivid or mundane imagination which changes ideas. For example, it wasn’t the idea of a hierarchical mass society based on agriculture and pastoralism conjured up by some bright and innovative ancient pre-historical hunter-gatherers or pastoralists which led to the growth of ancient city states and eventual empires. It was the prior existence of small subsistance community settlements becoming succesful city states which then by actual armed force – not by eloquent persuasion – created more and more of them and then amalgamated those into empires. The successful amalgamations and empires were then copied and the failures were abandoned or their remnants relocated.

Later still it was not the idea of the capitalist mode of production hatched up by some cottery of talented Venetian-type individuals which created the ideas for a capitalist system, but the success of certain trading cities sending out deliberately manufactured surplus goods for sale or exchange and then sending out surplus displaced and dissatisfied citizens to form colonies in resource rich locations which when successful, were copied and eventually became the foundations of the developing European capitalist mode of production.  Which after further generations of replication eventually overpowered the feudal agricultural system and became fully global.

But in reality, this human species socio-economic process cannot be physically separated from the biological foundations of the entire socio-economic history of the hierarchical mass society system. The material foundations of all life on earth have always been the biological systems and biological species units and these are always reproduced and replicated from bottom up cell units and multi-cellular systems not from top-down finished individual units and from completed systems. The obvious fact from a modern study of life on earth, is that anthropocentric social theories have intellectually inverted that actual historical process and preached that far-sighted elites create complex societies and therefore conveniently, that complex societies need elites. In fact rather than fiction it is complex mass societies which create the conditions for elites (more often bloodthirsty than far-sighted) to arise and to dominate populations and they cease to arise when communities are too small to support their lavish requirements. Thinking anthropocentrically, however introspectively,  does not alter that social and biological reality. The mistaken modern idea that biology can be negated by sociology or that biology is not ninety percent destiny has only arisen on the basis of a social reaction against patriarchal anthropocentric practices and assumptions that men are biologically destined to exhibit aggression and oppression.

Yet when these assumptions are rigorously examined it turns out that these characteristics were not biological traits at all but the social results of the hierarchical mass society economic practices which needed armed men to steal resources and who decided to strip females of being equal partners in social and economic affairs despite being more biologically equipped to ensure successful species reproduction. Based upon those hierarchical socio-economic mass society practices, a corresponding socio-economic logic was intellectually attached to gender roles which have now become embodied and embedded in their latest social structures. Yet without those roles and structures or where they are not strictly enforced nor continually required, alternative characteristics can easily develop as in the cases of gay men, and non-aggressive and non-oppressive men, or in the case of females becoming warriors, boxers, teachers and organisers, not as a result of biological determinism but of changing social factors and available employment opportunities.

Biology need not limit everything in human affairs,  but in its interdependent ecological structures it does immediately and ultimately determine how we survive as a species and so how wisely we relate to the current multi-species biosphere is crucial. Without a rich and diverse ecological balance and its species created, life sustaining biosphere, all current forms of life on earth will eventually cease to exist. In any contest of supremacy between the social world of humanity and the biological world of nature (i.e. between Marx’s man and nature) then biology will ultimately prevail. It is nature that produces and sustains the human species,  not the human species which produces and sustains nature. Quite the opposite. Therefore, humanity needs to find a social form of its species existence which compliments and sustains the entire biological world, rather than depletes it by deliberate intention or wilful neglect. The slow erosion or rapid destruction of the many essential and key-stone species of life on earth, may escape the attention of an anthropocentric fixated global population and the rapacious appetites for profit of capitalist and pro-capitalist elites, but the eventual results are clear.

The results of the relative and absolute over-extraction of organic and inorganic material and the overproduction and over consumption of modified organic and inorganic material exercised by all previous hierarchical mass societies, are not theoretical speculations, but are clearly evident in the ruins of ancient Sumer, Anatolia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome, and those socio-biological collapses were achieved without industrial levels of automated production. The turbo-charging of extraction, production, consumption and polluting waste by industrial automation methods has merely shortened the time-scale of excessive natural resource extraction and has exceeded the natural rate of essential species reproduction. Of particular concern in the 20th and 21st centuries, are the elimination and distribution of photosynthetic land and sea plants essential for maintaining the oxygenated balance of gases for breathing and the essential pollinating insect and animal species for maintaining the many complex and lengthy nutrition and energy rich food chains all life forms require on a frequently recurring time frame.

In this relative overproduction scenario humanities current productive efforts are like building an immense tower without an adequate foundation. At some point a critical rupture of some structural element will cause the whole current human edifice to collapse upon itself, as it has done repeatedly, throughout history. However, the critical rupture in this case will not be to the mechanical rupture of a building component, but with regard to biological/ecological organic species loss and the structural element will be to the ecological integrity of the biosphere. In that particular tragic scenario, any future surviving human communities, would be wise to not repeat the mistakes of the several thousand year old history of anthropocentric arrogance and ignorance stretching from ancient Babylon to modern Britain; from ancient Anatolia to modern America or from ancient Sparta to modern Spain. At some point humanity will need to see itself as an integral and dependent part of the evolution of life on earth and live, love, produce and reproduce accordingly. I would prefer that is done sooner than later, but that is looking highly unlikely at the moment, given the prevailing breadth and depth of anthropocentric arrogance and ignorance, circulating within the human species.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2025)