On every scale, from the smallest cells to the entire planet, the essential elements of life are constantly used and re-used. Biogeochemical cycles are the basis of the biosphere.
Metabolic rifts
Archive | History
Metabolic rifts
Five Revolutions: How bacteria created the biosphere and caused the first climate crisis
Metabolic Rifts Today. Beginning a new series by Ian Angus, on how contemporary science illuminates and extends metabolic rift theory in the 21st century.
Book Review
14 Billion Years of Revolutionary Change
‘Quarks to Culture’ is an important but flawed account of emergence in history, of 12 major transitions that created the world we live in, from the Big Bang to the Geopolitical State.
Reading for reds and greens
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, January 2018
Seven new books on the new terrain of class war, social reproduction theory, limits to NGO radicalism, ideas for change, shrinking the technosphere, technology and inequality, and property formation in colonial North America
Book Review
Do seven cheap things explain the history of capitalism?
Ian Angus says a new book by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore replaces concrete analysis with an artificial schema that reduces the complex organic relationship between society and the rest of nature to cheap things
reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, December 2017
Six new books on democratic eco-socialism, war and the environment, genes and intelligence, climate change and the Roman Empire, the little ice age in North America, and views of the Anthropocene
Revolutionary art
Again: “I paint what I see,” said Rivera
C&C published E.B. White’s 1933 poem six years ago, to mark the 125th anniversary of Diego Rivera’s birth. We repeat it now to mark the 60th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest artists of the 20th Century.
What If?
Cholera, Contingency, and Marx’s Drinking Water
Ecosocialist Notebook: A visit to two historic sites in London prompts thoughts about the role of individuals in history, and the possibility that Marxism might never have happened.
An 1862 eco-critique
Les Misérables: Metabolic rift in the sewers of Paris
Victor Hugo’s masterpiece includes a powerful attack on the urban wastefulness that steals nutrients from the land. Like Marx and Engels, he based his critique on the work of the chemist Justus von Liebig.
book review
‘A Redder Shade of Green’ explores the intersections of science and socialism
Martin Empson says Ian Angus’s new book makes the case for a renewed synthesis between science and the humanities, using the insights offered by both to develop a strategy for action.
Reading, red and green
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2017
Five new books on climate change and human health, ecology and imperialism in the global south, environmental economics, capitalism and universities, and the meaning of hegemony
Ecosocialist Notebook
Hal Draper on the Marx-versus-Engels myth
The ideologues who try to drive a wedge between Marx and Engels must ignore the simple fact that Marx read and approved of Engels’ most important work.
Reading for reds and greens
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2017
Five new books on climate change, the Anthropocene, water, and food. Plus: an inspiring account of the Russian Revolution by award-winning science fiction writer China Miéville.