REALITY VERSUS IDEOLOGY (Part 4.)
Left Anthropocentric theory and practice.
In this part 4 of the series on the contrast between reality and ideology I shall again focus on the radical left positions on ecology and climate concerns within hierarchical mass society social and political structures. The following statements have been issued by a radical tendency dualistically opposed to the prevalence within the radical left of a milieu of revolutionaries who talk and write about the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist mode of production but do little or nothing practical to achieve that end. The first statement I draw attention to is the following;

“The purpose of communist theory has never been the cultivation of moral prestige, nor the production of a subcultural identity through which educated classes can symbolically distance themselves from the brutality of capitalism whilst continuing to materially benefit from it.”

It was followed by;

“Entire milieus of self-described radicals speak endlessly of liberation whilst remaining structurally incapable of confronting power beyond rhetorical performance.”

This opinion correctly identifies that Communist theories have become a method that some of the educated individuals within the literate classes have adopted in criticising the capitalist mode of production, whilst materially benefiting from its hierarchical based form of producing the biological essentials of life within a collective social structure. Marxist and anti-racist ideas are also used by many commentators more in the nature of virtue signalling than as calls to action. Interestingly, such criticisms generally ignore the advice suggested by Marx himself when he wrote that;

“They forget, however, that they are opposing nothing but phrases to these phrases, and they are in no way combatting the real existing world when they are combatting solely the phrases of this world.” (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 5, page 30.)

Then the same radical left tendency moves from abstract descriptive evaluation to historical analysis asserting that;

“Communist theory emerged historically as the intellectual weapon of classes forced into struggle against dispossession, starvation, colonialism and industrial exploitation.”

In actual fact, communist practices and ideas are almost as old as the practices and ideas of hierarchical mass societies themselves and along with them increasingly sophisticated theoretical ideas about them. Sparta in ancient Greece, along with religious communes and same sex monasteries were practical ways a few early pioneers of communal living and the theories about them, but these were never used as as intellectual weapons. The same practical rationale applied to the medieval communards and digger movements and also to the secular egalitarian communist theories that emerged from within a few 19th and 20th century ‘Diggers and Dreamers’ middle-class intellectuals.

The latter 20th century manifestations evolved through an analysis of the capitalist mode of production and as response to the practical contradictions manifested in economic and social crises such as dispossesion, starvation, exploitation and colonialism, symptoms which actually date back to the hiersrchical mass societies of ancient Egypt, Babylon and Persia. The modern versions of these symptoms perpetrated by the personifications of capitalism were further analysed in detail by a number of individual such as Adam Smith, David Rìcardo and most notably by Karl Marx. So why would anyone on the left assert that communist theories emerged as intellectual weapons of class struggle – if they really know the history of what they are talking and writing about? The following statement is then added, by the same tendency;

“…capitalism is not primarily an ethical problem but a system of material domination. One does not defeat it through moral purity, one defeats it through organised power.”

This exemplifies another level of confusion in which abstractions are just being used to appear to be suggesting something relevant and profound. Capitalism is the term to describe a particular mode of production, it is not primarily a system of material domination, therefore ‘capitalism’ cannot be defeated by organised power. Material domination is achieved by organised power and can be overcome by an alternative form of organised power, but that then would still leave intact another form of organised power, wouldn’t it? . This is just not an abstract theoretical objection, for the Bolsheviks in 1919, did just that. They became an organised politival power which first overthrew, then took over the the Czarist organised state power that had already encouraged and allowed the introduction of the capitalist mode of production but this left political practice by its Bolshevik Leninist advocates didn’t cause or attempt to cause a change the mode of production. Red Czar’s (Lenin, Trotsky andnStalin) took over from a white Czar (Nicholas) and Russia continued to be ruled by an ‘organised elite power’.

This defeat of one organised power, by another in Russia, just allowed the ad hoc wage-labour and capitalist based system of post-feudal production to be accelerated and extended further, but under the domination of a new Bolshevik form of organised power. Opposition from within the hierachical mass society system of production and consumption, by those who suffer from its class contradictions and exploitative/oppressive practices are as old as the hierarchical mass society system itself. However, this opposition from within has invariably, if not always, started from an anthropocentric, human-focussed point of view. That view was to some extent inevitable in a social system devised by, and for, the benefit of the human species, and which evolved into its various hierarchical mass society forms.

Biological collectives.
Nevertheless, it was not the socio-biological essence of human societies which caused the potential overthrow of the original revolutionary biological transition from the earth as an inorganic planetary object orbiting around a declining star; to a planet teeming with the organic life of countless bio-chemical entities and multi-cellular organisms, energised by that declining stars’, internal atomic combustions. It is possible to assert the above claim, because of course, many species of life on earth, from Insects, Plants and Animals have formed groups and associations for temporary or more permanent socio-biological activities, but no other species has formed internal hierarchies requiring the existence of a privileged groups with the rest of the species being subordinate to an elite and performing labour services to those within the governing hierarchy. Species such as edible plant based grasses and forests, or Insects grouped in colonies and swarms, animals congregating in flocks and herds; aquatic animals such as schools of Cod, pods of Dolphins etc., exist as large-scale collectives, but not as large-scale hierarchical collectives.

Some life forms have congregated for biological purposes such as feeding, drinking and breeding, others for safety, but only the human species has added to these essential biological reasons for social aggregation the additional parasitic motive of having a class of subordinate workers who not only provide the essentials they need to exist as biological entities, but also provide a wide range of organic and inorganic luxuries which the hierarchical elite individuals have historically identified and consistently demanded. This hierarchical mass society form has been the sociological instrument by which the elites have articulated by means of another unique feature of the evolution of the human species, the acquisition of linguistic forms of education and written and spoken communication.

The hierarchical mass society form of human aggregation together with the development of written and spoken languages have formed the basis of an estrangement of the human species from its biological essence as a species being. This system has transformed those human beings socialised within them into playing down that biological essence consciousness and elevating the social essence and consciousness. In my book, Life on Earth (Past, Present and Future)’, I trace the bio-chemical essence of all biological life forms as comprising of the recycling sequence of; Nutrition, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing, and Death (N-M-G-R + A – D). That bio-chemical process is the essence of all individual cellular or multi-cellular organism of each category of species of life forms on earth.

This is so from the smallest Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic cells, to microorganisms, plants, insects, birds, fish, animals and humans and the nutrition fueling those processes is obtained from the inorganic elements of the material substance of the planet and from the organic material provided by the immense range of living species. As each form of life dies, whether at the end of it’s own specific (N-M-G-R + A – D) life processes, or prematurely before a natural death, it becomes the nutritional source of some other microscopic or macroscopic species form. That is the biological essence and biological processes of all the millions of species of life on earth and this essence and theses processes can be traced across all the multifarious food chains on the planet we call earth.

But it is important to note that this biological essence of life on earth and these biological processes of (N-M-G-R + A – D) are such that no matter how large or complex the multi-cellular organisms becomes, the nutritional (N) input for each organism within each species is based upon an optimally sufficient amount. Importantly, within the earths biosphere, consuming optimally sufficient natural resources, rather than excessively consuming natural resources, does not prohibit or curtail an evolutionary development within each species, were this ocurrs. Organism and species sophistication and complexity are clearly not restricted by modest consumption of natural resources (N) within the entire biological paradigm of existence. Unlike hierarchical mass society forms which have historically raised productive extraction of natural resources in order to allow their elites to consume them at rates beyond what is optimally necessary and sufficient for their species. In fact to a level that is unnecessarily, exorbitant, unhealthy and now, demonstrably biologically destructive.

Over billions of years, each biological organism and species have only taken from nature what was optimally sufficient for their own (N-M-G-R + A – D) processes in order to continue to exist and evolve – when possible or necessary. Biologically thinking rather than sociologically thinking, anything less than the optimally sufficient Nutritional intake and one or more of their M-G-R processes might fail; anything more than the optimal (N) intake and either the surplus (N) will be excreted or will trigger other symptoms such as more than average organism growth, or result in more than average reproductive activity. It is well recorded, that increased population growth or decreased population growth follows very closely the availability or absence of adequate nutrition (all other factors remaining equal or optimal) of most species forms of life on earth. This symptom occurs from abnormal algae blooms, abnormal insect swarms, abnormal plant yeilds, animal herd numbers and even results in human population increases or decreases.

The socialisation of a biology.
If we now contrast the biological essence and processes of life on earth in general, the (N-M-G-R + A – D) phases energised by bio-chemical or biological sufficiency – with the sociological essence of hierarchical mass society humanity, we immediately note a stark contrast. From shortly after humans began to be perminently aggregated into hierarchical mass societies, we notice a different nutritional (N) intake rationale emerging and also a different relationship to movement and change. Biological change is relatively slow, incremental, seasonal and frequently millenial. In nature a change in evolutionary form and function can take immensely long periods of miniscule incremental adaptations, measured in decades or even in millions of years. However, with the onset of settled heirarchical, agricultural mass communities, the human consciousness of change (and consequently the invention of units of time as a measurement of change) becomes determined by seasonal changes and by productive activity measured by daily or hourly units of labour.

In human hunter-gatherer communities, the human species, like all other species were not consciously (or radically) changing the nutritional and useful aspects of nature, but adapting to its general and particularly evolved rhythms and evolutionary forms. Obtaining Nutrition and other useful natural resources, from settled agriculture communities, however, required a different relationship of the human species to nature based upon controlling the quantity and quality of what natural resources, were to be grown and extracted from the specific areas chosen for cultivatation. Alongside that socio-biological change came another. On the one hand, for the elite strata of such societies in particular, the individual (N) intake was switched from a routine bio-chemical nutritional sufficiency based upon biological survival, to routine over-indulgences, gluttony, organ system dis-eases, such as gout, social system inflicted malfunctions and even premature death.

On the other hand the nutritional intake of the non-elite individuals within them; such as slaves, serfs and tied labouring populations were frequently reduced to below the optimum sufficiency, with the result that their own spectrum of sociologically created and class-based deficiencies and occupational dis-eases commenced. These twin bicameral biological results of the hierarchical mass society form of social aggregation has continued from ancient to more modern times. The modern capitalist elite – as a class – over-indulge in consuming biological organic and inorganic material extraction from nature – in all its manifest forms. It does so whilst, under their capitalist mode of production and distribution it; a) restricts the extraction power of the labouring classes from nature to below the optimum biological (N-M-G-R + A – D) level by the introduction of low wage and salary ‘income-policies’, along with paltry social ‘benefits’ for those surplus to employment category requurements and; b) encourages the over-indulgence and over-extraction of natural resources by those middle income sectors situated between the ruling bourgeois elites and the working classes.

Hence, since the formation of hierarchical mass societies the essence of humanities sociological existence has overwhelmingly negated and directly (and indiretly) dominated the natural biological essence of the human species and msny other species. Since the formation of hiearchical mass society format, the human species has been at war with itself and with its biological support matrix. Despite ecological and biological reality, human consciousness, has over thousands of years designated the highest form of life on earth to be concentrated first onto a single, supposedly superior species among all other species – i.e.humanity; then this anthropocentric biological reductionism was further focused into the supposedly superior male gender and finally reduced into the great male elite personifications – Xerxes, Agemenon, Jason, Alexander, Ceasar etc. This real-world historical hierarchical mass society process, achieved by brutal levels of humanity, was then woven into a mystical and magical narrative form of monotheistic religions and given a supposedly superior, peaceful – other worldly origin – in an invisible creative spiritual’ ‘force’ – modelled upon a human male leader – god!

Biology, not sociology, creates a sustainable complexity.
The slow, marvelous, evolutionary path of the biological cell, into single complex and multi-cellular combinations is stunning when it is realised that after millions of years it culminated in complex and sophisticated living organs and species. When humans discovered that this sophistication and complexity included the higher cortical processing abilities within their own and other species central processing brain organs, it had already been used to imagine and create fictions about life on earth and colluded in the imaginary existence of an invisible representation of an elderly father figure. The cultural evolution an imaginary, invisible bipedal god was a betrayal of the rational capabilities of the biological evolution of the human brain. The real, but previously unknown, unique and complex biological basis of the origin and subsequent development of life on earth, in all its myriad forms, had to await the electron scanning microscope developed in the 20th century. It was only then that the subsequent discovery of the microscopic Prokaryotic, Eukaryotic cells and their functioning internal organelles, bio-chemical associations and self-reproducing biological forms containing complex functions, was more fully revealed.

But as yet, this awesome complexity and sophistication, has not been fully revealed to everyone. The anthropocentric cultural conservatism of the capitalist elites, together with the extractive dynamic of their preferred mode of production and the compliance of their scientific intellectual fellow travellers, has hindered the emergence of a 20th and 21st century renaissance (rebirth) in the materialist sociological intellectual perspective on the existence of life on earth. In the 19th century, Marx in particular, had challenged and advanced Hegel’s idealist dialectical world view, by moving its focus away from mystical, ideological fixations, toward a more materialist dialectic. Nevertheless, whilst doing so, he had not been able to challenge or overturn its anthropocentric and one-sided obsession with it’s own particular species, rather than with life on earth as a whole! When Marx wrote in his personal notes (prior to the publication of his major economic work, Das Capital), that the system of capitalist production was contradictory, he had also then added;

“This contradictory requirement, whose development will show itself in different forms as overproduction, over-population etc., asserts itself in the form of a process in which the contradictory aspects follow closely upon each other in time. A necessary consequence of them is the greatest possible diversification of the use value of labour – or of the branches of production – so that the production of capital constantly and necessarily creates, on one side, the development of the intensity of the productive power of labour , on the other side, the unlimited diversity of the branches of labour , i.e. thus the most universal wealth, in form and content, of production, bringing all sides of nature under its domination.” (Marx. Grundrisse. Introduction. Emphasis added. RR.)

Thus although Marx identified some of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, he did not view the ‘development of the intensity of the productive power of labour’ as problematic, for life on earth, nor the arrogance assumption of ‘bringing all sides of nature under its domination’. Indeed, he viewed the capitalist mode of production as the means of ‘unconditionally developing the productive forces of society’. He also asserted 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.)

And;

“Capital’s ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness [ Naturbedürftigkeit ], and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one. This is why capital is productive; i.e. an essential relation for the development of the social forces.” (Marx. Grundrisse. Introduction. Emphasis added. RR.)

Marxism: A modern Renaissance failure.

The all-side development of production and consumption, along with the historically created needs supplanting those of natural necessity (i.e. biological necessities) was for Marx the logical and necessary revolutionary outcome of the collapse of industrial capitalism as a social system and its replacement with industrial socialism. Marx represented the pinnicle of 19th century Anticapitalist analysis and humanist critique, but from Marx’s own words this pinnacle clearly remained anthropocentrically located both within its practices and its ideological expressions. In the almost 200 years since Marx forensically analysed the capitalist mode of socoalised production, it has changed considerably and so too have human discoveries and evaluations, particularly the detail and sophisicated complexity of the interdependent species which make up the earth’s biosphere. These and the hierarchical mass society per-capita need for the excessive extraction and consumption of natural resources and the polluting effects of the waste materials created during production, all need to be factored into the assessment of the ecological present and future of life on earth as a whole.

Indeed, the success of industrial capitalism, in its all-sided development of production and consumption, along with its ‘historically created needs’ in place of natural ones, has created an almost impenetrable barrier to a wide spread understanding the problems life on earth in general and the human species in particular, and its reluctance to eliminate or even correct them. The historic needs and power of the ruling elites have increased incrementally and geographically and by the same automated and computerised industrial production methods has intoxicated vast numbers of the increased populations on earth whose system manipulated historic ‘needs’ have assumed the form of expected and demanded ‘entitlements’ to consume ever more sophisticated commodities and services. Entitlement to consume has become the dominant form of human emotional attachment to life on earth, and is experienced positively as fulfilment, or negatively as denial. Therefore, the dominant global socio-political tendencies in the 20th and 21st centuries, left, right and centre, have all aspired to institute economic reforms, which deliver these ‘so-called’ historic ‘entitlements’ on an more or less unrestricted or restrictricted basis.

During the Second World War (1939 – 1945) rationing scarce resources, limiting personal consumption, restrictions on private financial speculation, promoting national self-reliance on food and clothing, were all subject to Emergency Powers Acts, undertaken to defend the elite from conquest by foreign elites. But such possibilities are not even considered as temporary expedients to save the lives of the poor in the 21st century. The idea of introducing such radical measures in future human societies, in order to curtail or end the current excess extractions from the now, far from balanced biosphere, is not even in any current or future political manifesto. Hence, it is nigh on impossible to escape the following conclusion. Alternative ideas alone – not even the most extreme – will ‘shock’ the majority of humans out of the current anthropocentric, narcissistic, self-obsession and self-indulgence. Even among those on the anti-capitalist and radical green left, it is clear that an anthropocentric, ‘entitlement-syndrome’ – is now firmly rooted there also. As yet, the vast majority of global citizens simply wish to breathe their own particular sociological ‘elixir of life’ into this dying, top-down socio-economic system of human aggregation, instead of getting busy creating alternatives.

Building alternatives, of course, requires a necessary understanding of how the biological essence of all life on earth, functions, and why the vast matrix of life forms are absolutely necessary to make the planetary biosphere habitable to all the life forms currently resident within it. But it will also require a practical, real-world shock! I suggest a series of sufficiently large crises and collapses of the current sociological anthropocentric hierarchical mass society system, will be the necessary level of shock, to galvanise commitment to obtain sufficient understanding and to maintain the required energy for a really comprehensive, revolutionary change to become seriously contemplated and actioned. Alongside and prior to that, it will be necessary for a critical-mass of non-authoritarian, revolutionary-humanist, Giaia-centric activists, to emerge and assist locally in promoting humanities return to its origins and roots within nature and with the raised biological consciousness necessary to use our intelligence to ‘nurture’ and protect our planets unique and amazing biosphere.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2026)

For those who are interested in the evolution of ‘Life on Earth (Past, Present and Future)’, I have written a book bearing that title which contains a more detailed consideration of the historic tension between the biological essence of life on earth and the social essence of the human species. The book can be obtained in Ebook or Paperback form from Amazon, Browns Books, Waterstones, Strand Books and Google.

Two recent independent reviews.

“Discover the history of life on our beautiful planet with Life On Earth (Past, Present & Future!) by Roy Ratcliffe. A book that will keep you hooked till the very end.”

“Humanity now dominates a planet that once teemed with life’s myriad forms — yet this domination has come at an unbearable cost. ‘Life on Earth (Past, Present and Future)’, strips away comforting myths and exposes the brutal truth: our species has polluted skies and seas, decimated countless others, entrenched inequality, and disrupted the very processes that sustain life itself. More than a history, this is a radical critique of anthropocentric arrogance and ecological devastation. It demands we rethink our place in nature, confront the deep roots of the crisis, and envision a future grounded in ecological humility and justice.” (Countercurrents.org)