Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life (2015): A Review, Part II

The relationship between capitalism and environmental degradation is a critical area of study. In Part I [https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/review-capitalism-web-life-verso-books-2015-jason-w-moore-hendrix-zyjle], I summarized Moore’s concept of Capitalocene as an attempt to lay bare the assertion that the causes of the climate crisis are an Anthropocentric phenomenon, that its causes are Anthropogenic — “man-made”. Moore asserts that this perspective lacks perspicacity when one fully comprehends the history from which the current existential threats derive. More to the point, he emphasizes, history shows these causes to be “Capitalogenic” — “capital-made” from premeditated ideological decisions. Capitalism, Moore writes, is both an “historical project” and an “historical process”.

“As project, capitalist civilization produces both forms and material relations that lend Cartesian dualism its kernel of truth. Capitalism creates the idea and even a certain reality of “the” environment as an external object. The idea of the environment as external object is not wholly false, but rather a historical creation of the capitalist world-ecology.” [Moore, 2014)

Moore's framework centers on the capitalist imperative to reduce costs across four key inputs — the "Four Cheaps", expanded to seven in collaboration with Raj Patel in 2017:

• Cheap labor: Gendered, racialized, and colonized populations are exploited, often through systemic violence and exclusion from "society" as human subjects.
• Cheap food: Industrial agriculture prioritizes labor productivity over energy efficiency, leveraging cheapened ecosystems and monocultures.
• Cheap energy: The commodification of energy resources, such as coal and oil, underpins capitalist expansion.
• Cheap raw materials: Natural resources, from timber to silver, are stripped from their geographies with little regard for ecological or social consequences.

Moore’s emphasis on these inputs/outputs of capitalism endemic to capitalist production requires a complementary analysis of the behavioral "inputs" driving the system. From these inputs we should come to better understand the patterns, ideologies, and systemic behaviors that enable the persistent extraction, exploitation, and externalization processes foundational to capitalism, which Moore emphasizes, are products of a dehumanizing construction that alienates labor and nature from their intrinsic value.

These behaviors become more frenetic, Moore explains, as the inability of capitalists to create opportunities to invest surplus capital are dramatically constrained:

“The view of capitalism in this book speaks to something that is dynamic about the present situation and will feed into an increasingly unstable situation in the next decade or two. We have this huge mass of capital looking to be invested and a massive contraction of opportunities to get work for free. This means that capitalism has to start paying its own costs of doing business, which means that opportunities for investing capital are shrinking. There’s all this money that nobody has any idea what to do with.” — See Jason Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: an Interview with Jason W. Moore. Accessed at: https://viewpointmag.com/2015/09/28/capitalism-in-the-web-of-life-an-interview-with-jason-moore/]

Moore's analysis highlights a critical contemporary tension within capitalism: the increasing accumulation of capital alongside a diminishing capacity to exploit resources and labor without cost or at limited cost. This contradiction is central to understanding the instability of capitalism today, the near future, and beyond. One of the many reason why this is the case is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which allowed corporations and large donors to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaign efforts. Consequently, the political landscape has changed fundamentally in the United States as America’s capitalist class has been investing in the commodification of politicians and judges, conterminously producing a political coup-d’etat that is deconstructing citizenship protections granted by the Constitution and putting in place sociopathic public officials to enforce dehumanizing and violent practices in which any remaining citizenship rights will be subordinated to a right-wing agenda. What are the implications of this for USA society and the world as a whole?

Let’s review Moore’s behavioral inputs to the Capitalogenic system in which change has occurred in three key areas:

1. First, the abstract binary identified in Capitalism in the Web of Life — Civilization vs. Nature — has coalesced into a binary of Right vs. Left. At the same time, the core ideologies in US society, capitalism and white supremacy, have further converged based upon the same “outside the bounds of humanity” values they have had since the late 17th century, which is that skin color and gender matters. In this renewed phase, some Americans are not just commodified objects relegated to the status of exploitable resources, but are relegated additionally to the Left as an enemy.
2. Expect dehumanization of labor in the USA to be further elaborated, racialized and engendered categories will become more pronounced. The first assaults have already been initiated under the Biden administration. Under Donald Trump, immigrants from Africa and South America, and Africa-Latino-descended American citizens will face increased dehumanization. On the other hand, holders of H1B visas (designated capitalist pets), a process that began in the 1980s, will be elevated to elite status based upon their racialized religion and common social prejudices and unverified technical “expertise”.
3. Capitalism’s “grow-or-die” imperative will incentivize piratical behaviors from “wealth accumulators”. Decision-making in the US economy will continue to be dominated by a preference for immediate profitability no matter the social costs, thereby discouraging behaviors oriented toward sustainability or long-term ecological equilibrium. Indeed, like judges and politicians, capitalists will be looking for domestic, not frontier, “pots of gold” to exploit with an abundance of surplus capital, like our pension funds, social security funds, medicare, etc. The headlines in the first month of 2025 have already shown that Trump partisans in the financial industry are seeking to have retirement savings treated as investment capital in a speculative environment. Opponents are likening this proposal to turning the entire country into a casino in which investors will be gambling with other people’s money and earning big fees in the process. During Donald Trump’s first term, private equity investments, such as target-date funds, were allowed to be included in professionally managed retirement accounts. Currently, private equity firms who supported this deregulation effort are seeking permission to directly tap tax-deferred contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, for investments in leveraged buyouts, private loans, and illiquid real estate deals. (Investment News, 6 Jan 2025, https://shorturl.at/LUA0X; Chris Norlund, YouTube videocast, https://shorturl.at/OAvie)

Moore suggests that this situation necessitates a transformative approach to economic relations, advocating for a shift towards sustainability and equity to address the systemic contradictions caused by the convergence of ideologies: white supremacy and capitalism, that the future stability of the system hinges on the ability of leadership to adapt to these realities, or all citizens will face the reality of profound upheaval as social and ecological pressures mount. Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen at any level. Antonio Damasio et al. tells us why this is unlikely to occur:

“...if ideology is the false, alienated consciousness of an alienated society, the science of that society is inseparable from its ideology. A science that is truly and totally disalienated does not yet exist; it can only be the finished product of a disalienated society. But we can catch a glimpse of it, just as we can envision human liberation, once we become aware of our false consciousness. It is time to repeat: reason and emotion are the inseparable products of the existence and activity of [the hu]man, physical and spiritual, social and individual.” (Antonio Damasio, 1994)

Unfortunately, the capacity for leaders and the majority of its citizens in the United States to overcome their false consciousness is just an imaginary. The Israeli Genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people is a red line in which Western leaders and their hegemonic ambitions unconditionally are complicit, with but few leaders in opposition. Meanwhile, the global capitalist-owned media still has its mouthpieces asking the question: “Is the situation in Gaza a genocide”? As a process, capitalism is a structural framework in which false consciousness is the operating ecological environmental ideology (world-ecology) under which we all live. All achievements within it take precedence — are rewarded — over social equity anywhere, creating a global feedback loop continually reinforcing the status quo, promoting social relationships of abuse and oppression, and expanding both sociopathy and psychopathy in the human genome. The relationships between Israel, the United States, and Europe are the most significant example of billboard-size warnings about the future of the planet to date.

Further Readings

Bhattacharya, T. (2017). Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Pluto Press.

Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge.

Foster, J. B. (2011). The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. Monthly Review Press.

Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2014). "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens." Perspectives on Politics, 12(3), 564-581.

Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.

Lessig, L. (2011). Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It. Twelve.

Márkus, Gy?rgy. "Concepts of ideology in Marx." CTheory 7.1-2 (1983): 84-103.

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

Wallerstein, Immanuel. (2004). World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Duke University Press.