The relationship between capital and ecology in the longue durée

Finance. Climate. Food. Work. How are the crises of the twenty-first century connected? In Capitalism in the Web of Life, Jason W. Moore argues that the sources of today's global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature, including human nature. Drawing on environmentalist, feminist, and Marxist thought, Moore offers a groundbreaking new synthesis: capitalism as a "world-ecology" of wealth, power, and nature. Capitalism's greatest strength-and the source of its problems-is its capacity to create Cheap Natures: labor, food, energy, and raw materials. That capacity is now in question. Rethinking capitalism through the pulsing and renewing dialectic of humanity-in-nature, Moore takes readers on a journey from the rise of capitalism to the modern mosaic of crisis. Capitalism in the Web of Life shows how the critique of capitalism-in-nature-rather than capitalism and nature-is key to understanding our predicament, and to pursuing the politics of liberation in the century ahead.

"Capitalism in the Web of Life seeks to analyze the root cause of this impasse for environmentalism: the widely-shared view that 'the environment' is a separate and unique part of existence outside of capitalism that capitalism devalues." - New Inquiry

"The achievement of Moore's book is to move past a metaphysical concept of nature towards an historical one.. Such a rich historical understanding of world-ecological regimes is going to be of vital importance." - Public Seminar

"The type of theory we should all be pursuing . If you don't have a copy of this thing already, you should get one." - Daily Kos

"Jason Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life is, above all else, an ambitious book. At once theoretical treatise and empirical history, Moore's work strives toward a '"unified" theory of historical capitalism and historical nature' drawn together within a new paradigm of world-ecology . Moore sets out to do nothing less than to articulate, under the name of world-ecology, a 'new paradigm' for critical scholarship on capitalism, world history, and environmental thought that will transcend, once and for all, the dualism that for him is the singular source of all of the violence of modernity." - Antipode

"Moore's theoretical contribution, and it is major, is his insistence that value is determined by, and capitalism is dependent upon, what he calls the 'Four Cheaps' . His examples are wide-ranging and historical. Moore is at his best in this book when he not only ranges across centuries but also ranges across numerous fields of thought, most notably laboring to overcome the divide between Marxist value theory and ecology." - Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group

"Not only does Moore provide an exceptionally powerful sense of the dystopian impact of capitalism . he also reveals a compelling dialectical grasp not just of how it might have to come to an end, but why it would be deplorable even if there were no limits to its continuing." - Radical Philosophy

"For nearly two decades, environmental historian Jason Moore's 'world-ecology' theorisation has crossed the boundaries of sociological, historical, environmental, economic and literary disciplines. His monograph, an amalgamation of decades of research and critical writing as well as cross-disciplinary engagement in the humanities and social sciences, is likely to become central to future environmental theorisation." - Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism

"Moore calls for 'a new ontological politics' to subvert the metaphysical and moral imagination of capitalist nature...Affirms historical materialism as the basis for the solution to our ecological crisis." - Commonweal

"Jason Moore ... has produced a text that is required reading. Moore ... seeks to bring nature to the centre of historical change and a dialectical understanding of capitalism to the heart of the analysis." - Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

"Capitalism in the Web of Life is required reading for all those with an interest in the patterns of development of agriculture in capitalism, both historical and contemporary." - Journal of Agrarian Change

"Few books published today have such a broad scope or are as forceful in their claims, and Capitalism in the Web of Life is certain to spark productive conversations in upper-level political ecology and critical development seminars, as well as among faculty working in a range of disciplines." - Journal of Political Ecology