September 14, 2025

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

1 hour 48 minutes

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

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

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S03E19 | Wendy Brown on Socialist Governmentality

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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/

---

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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

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