S03E47 - Jason W. Moore on Socialism in the Web of Life

Jason W. Moore discusses the problematic history of the
nature-society divide, his alternative world-ecology approach and
the challenges of building socialism.


 


Shownotes


Jason’s personal website:


https://jasonwmoore.com/


Jason at Binghamtom University:


https://www.binghamton.edu/sociology/faculty/profile.html?id=jwmoore


The World-Ecology Research Collective:


https://worldecologynetwork.wordpress.com/


https://www.researchgate.net/lab/World-Ecology-Research-Collective-Jason-W-Moore


Moore, J. W., & Patel, R. (2020).  A History of the
World in Seven Cheap Things. A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and
the Future of the Planet. Verso.


https://www.versobooks.com/products/817-a-history-of-the-world-in-seven-cheap-things


Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life. Ecology and
the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.


https://www.versobooks.com/products/74-capitalism-in-the-web-of-life


for an overview of different approaches to conceptualizing
society/capitalism and nature:


https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/ecology-marxism-andreas-malm/


on Andreas Malm:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Malm


Malm, A. (2018). The Progress of this Storm. Nature and Society
in a Warming World. Verso.


https://www.versobooks.com/products/574-the-progress-of-this-storm


Malm, A. (2016). Fossil Capital. The Rise of Steam Power and the
Roots of Global Warming. Verso.


https://www.versobooks.com/products/135-fossil-capital


Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia.


https://files.libcom.org/files/Caliban%20and%20the%20Witch.pdf


on Ernst Haeckel:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel


see also the chapter on Haeckel and the German Monist League in:


Gasman, D. (2017). The scientific Origins of National Socialism.
Routledge.


https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315134789/scientific-origins-national-socialism-daniel-gasman


on Actor-Network Theory:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory


on Bruno Latour:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour


on John Bellamy Foster:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bellamy_Foster


Bellamy, J. F. (2000) Marx’s Ecology. Materialism and Nature.
Monthly Review Press.


https://ia904504.us.archive.org/9/items/526394/John%20Bellamy%20Foster.%20Marx%27s%20Ecology..pdf


on Kohei Saito:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohei_Saito


on Pietro Verri:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Verri


Marx, K. (1976). Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume
One. Penguin.


https://www.surplusvalue.org.au/Marxism/Capital%20-%20Vol.%201%20Penguin.pdf


Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm


Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm


Marx’s and Engel’s German Ideology:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/


Marx’s Capital Vol. 3.:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/


Marx’s On The Jewish Question:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/


on Alfred Sohn-Rethel:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sohn-Rethel


Machado, C. & Miguel, N. (2013). The Money of the Mind and
the God of Commodities. The real abstraction according to
Sohn-Rethel.


https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48961/1/MPRA_paper_48961.pdf


on Donna Haraway:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway


on the “Special Period” in Cuba:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period


on James Lovelock:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock


Lovelock, J. (1979). Gaia. A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford
University Press.


https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gaia-9780198784883?cc=de&lang=en&#


on “Social metabolism”:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_metabolism


on Raymond Williams:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Williams


Smele, J. D. (2016). The ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916-1926. Ten
Years that Shook the World. Hurst.


https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-russian-civil-wars-1916-1926/


Engel-Di Mauro, S. (2021). Socialist States and the Environment.
Lessons for Eco-Socialist Futures. Pluto Press.


https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340418/socialist-states-and-the-environment/


Amin, S. (1990). Delinking. Towards a Polycentric World. Zed
Books.


https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/delinking-9780862328030/


on material and energy flow accounting:


see the chapter on that topic in:


Bartelmus, P. (2008). Quantitative Eco-nomics. How sustainable
are our economies. Springer.


https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4020-6966-6


Zeug, W. (2025). INDEP talk with Walther Zeug: Democratic
Economic Planning through Cybernetics & Holistic Accounting.


https://youtu.be/I4_8_lDfwEw?si=J-kdRzjIehZqPgs0


Kula, W. (2016). Measures and Men. Princeton University Press.


https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691639079/measures-and-men


Echterhölter, A. M. (2019). Quantification as Conflict. Witold
Kula’s Political Metrology and Its Reception in the West .
Historyka : studia metodologiczne, 49, 117-141 . Article 9.


https://journals.pan.pl/Content/114031/PDF/7%20ECHTERH%C3%96LTER.pdf


on Max Weber:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber


on Double-entry bookkeeping:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping


on “proletarian science”:


Moore, J.W. (2025). Nature and other dangerous words: Marx,
method and the proletarian standpoint in the web of life.
Dialectical Anthropology. 49, 149–167.


https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10624-025-09775-x


on Ecosystem services:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_service


on the “Ecological footprint” concept:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint


on Thomas Müntzer:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M%C3%BCntzer


on the Royal Botanic Gardens/Kew Gardens:


https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Botanic_Gardens_(Kew)


on the Stakhanovite movement:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement


on Cybernetics:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics


on Earth systems science:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_system_science


Selcer, P. (2018). The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment.
How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth. Columbia University
Press.


https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-postwar-origins-of-the-global-environment/9780231166485/


Medina, E. (2014). Cybernetic Revolutionaries. Technology and
Politics in Allende’s Chile. MIT Press.


https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Eden_Medina_Cybernetic_Revolutionaries.pdf


on Cybernetics in the Soviet Union:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union


on the Transitional demand:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_demand


see also:


Trotsky’s The Transitional Program:


https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/


on the Green New Deal:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal


on the European Green Deal:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Deal


on Geoengineering:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering


on Johan Rockström:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Rockstr%C3%B6m


on Planetary boundaries:


https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html


Klein, N. (2015). This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the
Climate. Penguin.


https://thischangeseverything.org/book/


Kushi, S., & Toft, M. D. (2022). Introducing the Military
Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions,
1776–2019. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 67(4), 752-779.


https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027221117546


on Allen Dulles:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles


on Reinhard Gehlen:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen


Talbot, D. (2016). The Devil’s Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA,
and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. Harper Collins.


https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-devils-chessboard-david-talbot?variant=32207669559330


on the concept of the Deep State:


Scott, P. D. (1996). Deep Politics and the Death of JFK.
University of California Press.


https://www.ucpress.edu/books/deep-politics-and-the-death-of-jfk/paper


Scott, P. D. (2017). The American Deep State. Big Money, Big Oil,
and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy. Rowman & Littlefield.


https://archive.org/details/americandeepstat0000scot/page/n5/mode/2up


Good, A. (2022). American Exception. Empire and the Deep State.
Skyhorse Publishing.


https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510769144/american-exception/


on the origin of the concept:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_Turkey


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susurluk_car_crash


recently released files relating to the assassination of JFK on
the website of the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA):


https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release-2025


on the current state of knowledge on the Nord Stream Pipeline
Explosion:


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-is-known-about-nord-stream-gas-pipeline-explosions-2025-08-21/


on the Nord Stream Pipeline Explosion releasing massive Amounts
of Methane:


https://youtu.be/7KBsf7bX9Nc?si=tDIxlFFF2ThO6Aeb


on Systems Dynamics:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics


the ‘Limits to Growth’ Report, commissioned by the Club of Rome:


https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/


the Club of Rome:


https://www.clubofrome.org/


on Jay Wright Forrester:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester


on the concept of the Anthropocene:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene


on James C. Scott:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott


Mies, M. & Bennholdt-Thomsen, V. (1999). The Subsistence
Perspective. Beyond the Globalised Economy. Zed Books.


https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/subsistence-perspective-9781856497763/


on the New Economic Policy (NEP):


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy


on the Belt and Road Initiative:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative


Nachmani, A. (1990). Civil War and Foreign Intervention in
Greece: 1946-49. Journal of Contemporary History, 25(4), 489–522.


https://www.jstor.org/stable/260759


on the “Soft Coup against the Wilson Labour Government”:


https://www.declassifieduk.org/a-possible-coup-against-the-labour-government/


https://www.mi5.gov.uk/history/the-cold-war/the-wilson-plot


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/mar/15/comment.labour1


on the actions of the US against North Korea in the Korean War:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Korean_War


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_biological_warfare_in_the_Korean_War


on the Cultural Revolution:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution


on Mao’s concept of the Mass Line:


https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.htm


on Jung’s concept of the Collective unconscious:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious


on (Neo-)Malthusianism:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism


Ehrlich, P. R. (1971). The Population Bomb. Ballantine Books.


http://pinguet.free.fr/ehrlich68.pdf


Tainter, J. A. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Cambridge University Press.


https://www.sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/Joseph-A-Tainter-The-collapse-of-complex-societies.pdf


on Millenarianism:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenarianism


Enzensberger, H. M. (1978). Two Notes on the End of the World.
New Left Review. I/110.


https://newleftreview.org/issues/i110/articles/hans-magnus-enzensberger-two-notes-on-the-end-of-the-world


Hansen, J. (2010). Storms of my Grandchildren. The Truth about
the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save
Humanity. Bloomsbury.


https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/storms-of-my-grandchildren-9781408807460/


Sweezy, P.M. (1990). Monopoly Capitalism. In: Eatwell, J.,
Milgate, M., Newman, P. (eds) Marxian Economics. Palgrave
Macmillan.


https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-20572-1_44


on Technofeudalism:


Varoufakis, Y. (2024). Technofeudalism. What Killed Capitalism.
Penguin.


https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781529926095


Durand, C. (2024). How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism.
The Making of the Digital Economy. Verso.


https://www.versobooks.com/products/2790-how-silicon-valley-unleashed-techno-feudalism


Culture, Power and Politics Podcast episode on the debate around
the concept “Technofeudalism”:


https://culturepowerpolitics.org/2025/07/04/is-capitalism-over-the-technofeudalism-debate/


Conservation International:


https://www.conservation.org/


Earth League International:


https://earthleagueinternational.org/


Rockström, J. et al. (2024). The Planetary Commons. A new
Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-regulating Systems in the
Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America.


https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301531121


the Trilateral Commission:


https://www.trilateral.org/


the Earth Commission:


https://earthcommission.org/


Johan Rockström’s interview in the Guardian:


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/29/johan-rockstrom-interview-breaking-boundaries-attenborough-biden


 


Future Histories Episodes on Related Topics


S3E44 | Anna Kornbluh on Climate Counteraesthetics


https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e44-anna-kornbluh-on-climate-counteraesthetics/


S03E33 | Tadzio Müller zu solidarischem Preppen im Kollaps


https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e33-tadzio-mueller-zu-solidarischem-preppen-im-kollaps/


S03E30 | Matt Huber & Kohei Saito on Growth, Progress and
Left Imaginaries


https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e30-matt-huber-kohei-saito-on-growth-progress-and-left-imaginaries/


S03E23 | Andreas Malm on Overshooting into Climate Breakdown


https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e23-andreas-malm-on-overshooting-into-climate-breakdown/


S03E19 | Wendy Brown on Socialist Governmentality


https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s03/e19-wendy-brown-on-socialist-governmentality/


 


---


If you are interested in democratic economic planning, these
resources might be of help:


Democratic planning – an information website


https://www.democratic-planning.com/


Sorg, C. & Groos, J. (eds.)(2025). Rethinking Economic
Planning. Competition & Change Special Issue Volume 29 Issue
1.


https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ccha/29/1


Groos, J. & Sorg, C. (2025). Creative Construction -
Democratic Planning in the 21st Century and Beyond. Bristol
University Press. [for a review copy, please contact:
amber.lanfranchi[at]bristol.ac.uk]


https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/creative-construction


International Network for Democratic Economic Planning


https://www.indep.network/


Democratic Planning Research Platform:


https://www.planningresearch.net/


---


Future Histories Contact & Support


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Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@FutureHistories


English webpage:


https://futurehistories-international.com


 


Episode Keywords


#JasonWMoore, #JanGroos, #Interview, #FutureHistories,
#FutureHistoriesInternational, #futurehistoriesinternational,
#DemocraticPlanning, #DemocraticEconomicPlanning,
#PoliticalEconomy, #History, #Revolution, #Revolutions, #Ecology,
#Environmental, #Colonialism, #Imperialism, #Capitalism,
#Economics, #DeepState, #WorldEcology, #NatureSocietyDivide,
#KarlMarx, #Socialism, #Cybernetics