The New Dark Age

Like an autoimmune disease that attacks the body it dwells in, capitalism is tearing apart the very planet that feeds it. Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth System (Monthly Review Press) builds on Karl Marx’s insight that while capitalism is dependent on the natural world, it is also waging war on the natural systems that sustain life on Earth.

Focusing on deadly rifts in  the most important natural systems, Ian Angus explains and elaborates on the Marxist view that capitalism is massively disrupting essential exchanges of matter and energy between society and the rest of nature, putting the entire Earth System in danger. After tracing the long-neglected history of metabolic rift theory in scientific and socialist writing, Angus draws on a wealth of modern research to extend and deepen the natural science basis of Marxist ecology.

In clear, non-technical language, Metabolic Rifts offers a scientific basis for understanding the deep causes of today’s environmental crises, and a program for action to prevent catastrophe in our time.

First responses …

“In Metabolic Rifts, Ian Angus offers a stunning investigation of our ecological crisis and of the often buried socialist resources we have for understanding it in order to change it. The result is a powerful and inspiring vision of an ecosocialist future—the only meaningful future we have. This is an urgent and indispensable book.” —DAVID MCNALLY, Professor of History, University of Houston; author of Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History

“An outstanding accomplishment, combining precise scientific data with a committed social and political perspective. Angus demonstrates that the anti-ecological logic of the capitalist system leads with blind thoroughness to the destruction of the conditions for life in this planet: only an ecosocialist revolution can save human civilisation.” —MICHAEL LÖWY, author of Ecosocialism. A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe

“One of the world’s leading ecosocialists offers a sweeping journey through metabolic-rift theory, a powerful and highly readable account of Marxist ecological thought and the science of the Earth System. Urgent and uncompromising, Metabolic Rifts convincingly shows how capitalism is driving planetary crises, and why only a mass ecosocialist movement can secure the Earth’s survival.”—ADAM HANIEH, author of Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market

“A clear, accurate and highly readable synthesis of how Earth’s life support systems, for our species as well as for countless others, have been imperilled by the headlong rush of Anthropocene change. Ian Angus explores the economic forces so central to all this and illuminates how both sociopolitical and scientific key ideas have developed. Highly recommended.”—JAN ZALASIEWICZ, founding chair of the Anthropocene Working Group; co-author of The Cosmic Oasis