Roy Radcliffe || I suggest it is not too much of an exaggeration to claim that the 20th Century witnessed a series of cataclysmic socio-economic events that culminated in two huge paroxysms of the hierarchical mass society system of human aggregation. These huge disturbances were in the form of two World Wars; the first lasting from 1914 – 1918; and the second lasting from 1939 – 1945. In a long history of wars between hierarchical mass society elites, dating back millennia, these two were unprecedented in that they involved multiple nation-state military alliances and introduced the modern phenomena of ‘total war’. The first one took place at a hitherto unknown international level and the second one took place on a genuinely global scale. Both wars were traumatic and accompanied by such huge levels of losses to life on earth in all its forms – human, animal, insect and plant, that an entirely new concept was applied – genocide!
Indeed, in the advanced capitalist countries of the world the general social, economic and financial circumstances were so bad in the decades leading up to these wars, that based upon them a 20th century revolutionary activist and multi-talented Marx-influenced, author, Leon Trotsky, claimed that these paroxysms marked the ‘Death Agony’ of capitalism. He also unwisely predicted that these death agony convulsions of the capital based socio-economic affairs of all nations, would establish the objective conditions and produce a grass roots motive for a solution that Karl Marx had earlier proposed. The solution suggested by Marx was – a world proletarian revolution – and the formation of an alternative socio-economic system. That system was characterised at the time as world socialism. The fact that this scenario did not actually materialise throws serious doubts both upon the predictive analysis and scenario.
In retrospect, it is clear that a hard core of revolutionaries of that 20th century period thought that the hierarchical mass society systems, initiated originally in the ancient middle-east, were part of a historic series of socio-economic progressions implemented by humanity, which would lead to improved living conditions for the human species. It was held that the original examples of such hierarchical mass societies (in ancient Sumer and Egypt) had been developed further in ancient Persia, Greece and Rome. During that development many of these city-state aggregations became large enough to be classed as ’empires’. It was a process often designated as the progress of ‘civilisation’. These hierarchical mass society forms continued expanding their territoritorial control and influence by guns, swords and murder throughout the long middle ages. Eventually, the hierarchical mass society system was transformed by the development of a capitalist mode of production.
After, a series of internal revolutions in Europe, these hierarchical mass societies became dominated and ruled by a new elite – the bourgeoisie. The transition from a Feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode introduced extra negative social contradictions and many of the 20th century revolutionaries concluded that the capitalist system – due to these internal contradictions – needed to be superseded. They imagined humanity needed to implement a further socio-economic transition, in the form of the creation of egalitarian mass societies structures based upon the industrial mass production methods which had already been pioneered within the existing bourgeois system. These future egalitarian hierarchical mass societies were designated by their revolutionary champions and promoters as socialism and communism.
In the 20th century, social systems based upon these particular isms were indeed founded (in Russia, China, Cuba and Yugoslavia) yet each one of these top-down hierarchical led systems replicated the general characteristics and symptoms of all previous hierarchical mass societies. Furtheremore, the historical record indicates that various capitalisms, various socialisms, various liberalisms, several fascisms, a handful of Islamisms, Hinduisms, and even Buddhisms were experimentaly tried. Yet all these elite orchestrated alternative societies, have demonstrated that they were all variations of the basic hierarchical mass society social structure and for this reason all merely replicated all the tensions, contradictions and dehumanising conditions attached to this particular template of human social living.
So it transpires, that the extended genocide of Palestinians by Israeli elites, the current major wars in Ukraine along with 2026 attack by Israel and the US on Iran in the Middle East, at a fundamental socio-economic level, are not specific to the capitalist mode of production, as some anti-capitalist commentators seem to think. All these historic paroxysms result from something more fundamental than capitalism, which afflicts all hierarchical mass society systems. These capitalist examples are just the continuation of hierarchical mass society contradictions being played out as they have been, generation after generation, but now in a more modern technical context. What the underlying contradictions the 20th century revolutionaries and their 21st century imitators had thought were specific to the capitalist mode of production, are actually specific to all hierarchical modes of production, and here is why.
From their earliest beginnings, the hierarchical mass society system of satisfying human nutritional and other socio-economic biological needs, had introduced an unresolvable contradiction between the natural resource requirements of these societies and the locally available natural resources needed to fulfil them. The privileged needs and desires of the elites governing these societies for luxuries such as palaces, silks, gold and silver ornaments, rich and plentiful foods, large armies for purposes of social control and territorial expansion, along with a class of bureaucracrats for administrative purposes, not only added excessively to the total needs of the whole society, but also seriously imbalanced the ratio between human consumption of nature and the biological rate of reproduction of their preferred natural resources.
This socio-economic class based resource imbalance of hierarchical mass societies quickly exceeded the locally available but limited natural resources. The result was that new resources and new territories containing them were constantly needed and obtained as the societies and their elites grew in numbers and desires. Consequently, if the new territories were not already occupied, the new resources could be obtained relatively peacefully. However, if any resources were already occupied, forcible seizure of them soon entered the socio-economic calculations of ruling class elites. Once the hero worshiping spin and the rose tinted glasses have been removed from anyone reading the historical narratives about ancient Sumer, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome they provide substantial evidence of this hierarchically acquired and therefore persistent characteristic of aggressive socio-economic expansion.
The fact that over extraction by hierarchical mass societies is a persistent characteristic is also evidenced by the various national histories during the long Middle Ages within Europe and the many other armed conflicts within the European and later Colonial periods and of course they are now occuring again in the 21st century. The capitalist mode of production by introducing advanced technology and power driven machines has not started the symptom of excessive extraction, consumption, transportation and pollution, it has merely increased the pace and volume of these activities and substantially increased ecological destruction and climate change imbalances. It is obvious to those not wilfully blind, that the contemporary elites in Russia, China, Israel, and the USA, for example, are currently actively and ruthlessly pursuing land and resource materials, that are currently controlled by other hierarchical mass societies.
The so-called progress of ‘civilisation’ has actually been an endless battle between privileged elites for control of ever greater natural resources, by means of armed warfare in which the non- elites lives have been sacrificed or degraded. Once this fundamental socio-biological relationship between hierarchical mass society natural resource consumption and the reproductive rate of growth of those natural resources, is understood, something existentially problematic becomes obvious. It is that the extraction and consumption of any natural resource cannot consistently exceed the natural reproduction of that resource and be sustainable. Even ignoring every other negative factor introduced by these hierarchical mass systems the socio-biological imbalance at their basis leads to an inevitable countdown.
The fact that this over extraction is a permanent characteristic of hierarchical mass societies is why this series of blogs bears the title of ‘Hierarchical Societies: The Final Countdown?’. For a few thousand years the hierarchical mass society system commencing in ancient Sumer, Egypt, Babylon, Greece etc., had room to expand whenever it needed new resources. Therefore the results of this consumption/available resource imbalance were hardly noticeable. After local resource exhaustion and even desertification, these societies expanded throughout the middle east, then throughout Europe, then by ocean travel throughout Asia, North America, South America, Africa and Oceana. Now in the 21st century, this hierarchical mass society system of human aggregation occupies and/or controls practically all the globe.
The implications are clear. So as long as humanity does not end its hierarchical mass society fixation, the future will be more of the same as it has been since ancient Egypt and Babylon and as it was during the 20th century. The pattern of; wars and genocides, along with long term lethal shortages of essential resources and climate change hardships are not individual elite character defects but the distorted logical outcomes of a system designed to function according to the needs of a privileged elites. The more astute elites, such as those congregating in Epstein File type oligarchies know this problem actually exists and that the contradictions are increasing. However, their solution to it is not to change the system which privileges them, but, as the Epstein elites demonstrated individually and collectively for entertainment and pleasure, they are prepared to sacrifice the masses by ignoring any moral and legal barriers to wars, genocides and the engineering of starvation level shortages.
Only 2,000 years after hierarchical mass society elites had adopted monotheistic religious creeds and had invented the myth of a super being having created humanity and nature, the modern elite worshipers and supporters of this invented mystical being are once again demonstrating they are quite prepared to mass eliminate large numbers of their own species. To understand how such a recurring process could develop and continue within the most advanced and intelligent biological species form of life on earth, we need to consider some important, but insufficiently considered socially derived symptoms of hierarchical mass societies.
The following three symptoms of hierarchical mass societies were identified by a number of 20th century thinkers and they were stressed in particular by the revolutionary-humanist thinker and activist Karl Marx. The symptoms are; Estrangement, Alienation and Dehumanisation. These socially derived and maintained symptoms are the socio-psychological expressions of the hierarchical mass society system. Parts 2 and 3 of this series (to follow) will indicate how these three symptoms of the hierarchical mass society system developed, how they came to dominate all elite strata of humanity and how they also spread to some of the non-elite victims of these societies.
II
Before going further in this series, it is important to recognise that once the social practices and purposes of hierarchical mass society structures are accepted by its elite members as valid, then certain logical outcomes follow. It does not matter whether the acceptance was obtained either voluntarily or cohersively, or whether the rational for acceptance of those practices and purposes is that they are considered a) the best, b) the least worse or c) the only sensible form of human socio-economic association. In order for those elites to maintain their privileges and retain the hierarchical mass social system which is designed to support their privileged elite existence within it, the elites must at all times hold on to power. Power and its enforcement, is the glue that keeps hierarchical mass societies together and allows them to continue to control, exploit, (and if necessary eliminate) those members of their own society, who resist or rebel against the system.
Even non-elite members of hierarchical mass societies, who enter into or are born into them must learn to live with and accept these social practices and purposes and therefore find themselves logically impelled to support the elite in general if not in all their particular actions or circumstances. In Part 1 of this series, it was established that the 20th and 21st century elites of these modern hierarchical social systems had enthusiastically retained and in some respects, enhanced the historically pioneered methods of power and control. It also established that modern elites had adopted the necessary elite mentality in order to exercise the type of control, practiced by the above noted ancient examples of such societies. Despite the fact that these methods and the mentality needed to enforce them were extant long ago in ancient Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome, they have also been consistently exhibited within every hierarchical mass society form from those beginnings to modernity.
Those methods and mindsets of elite control are not naturally or biologically transmitted through generations, but are socially created, transmitted and reinforced by traditions and training. Among these traditions are elite determined regulations, punishments, declarations of war and human species reduction by genocides along with other assorted crimes against humanity. The evidence that modern elites are effectivly socialised and conditioned in essentially the same way as their ancient predecessors in order to develop an inhumane disregard for their own species, is overwhelming. The evidence lies not only in the fact that 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century elites have perpetrated such crimes against humanity themselves, but that so few elites in the 20th and 21st centuries have spoken out and denounced the crimes perpetrated by themselves or by rival elites, as the cover up of the Epstein files reveals. For a further example, the silence and hidden support by advanced country elites over the entire seven decades of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, is a well documented fact in the UN archives.
Moreover, the repeated abscence of criticisms or condemnations by global elites, during the attempted 21st century Zionist orchestrated Final Solution to their Palestinian communities in Gaza, and the West Bank, metaphorically speaks volumes, about the dehumanisation of non-elite people within hierarchical mass societies. Furtheremore, the two world wars and numerous genocides during the 20th century were only different in both size and scope from the ancient examples mentioned, but not in their core essence. Although both the 20th century wars and genocides were – for the first time in human history – extreme total-war examples of the hierarchical mass society characteristic of conquest, expansion and annihilation of those other elites controlling wanted resources, the purpose of ethnic cleansing was in essence the same.
In these more modern violent outbreaks, all citizens on each side, military or non-military, were assigned to some form of war associated task and the tasks were centrally co-ordinated and directed to securing valuable assets and killing as many of the human species on the other side as possible. In fact the 20th century was the first century in which the technical ability of each hierarchical mass society side had been deliberately increased at the military industrial level during peacetime to the point that it was capable of not just suppressing but exterminating other human communities. Moreover, its dehumanised elites were willing and prepared to use those resources to try to exterminate the other sides communities – completely! The symptoms of mass annihilation and systematically perfected practices of torture in order to obtain the resources they desire, which has emerged within the human species (and which has not appeared among any other species) raises the question of – why!
Why is it that the elites of the one species, which has the most intellectual levels of consciousness of itself and of other species, has exhibited over successive generations this phenomenon of torture, murder and genocide of members it’s own species? Very few of our hierarchical mass society intellectuals seem to ask this question or to venture a sociologically based answer. This abundantly evidenced failure, along with the more recent well evidenced fact, that elite members of the most intelligent and technologically advanced species knowingly continue to damage and destroy the very biological multi-species biosphere in which our own human species lives. With a 21st century scientific level of biological understanding this individual human and species level of self-destructive and eco-destructive development makes no rational sense. However, without such a level of understanding it makes enough rational sense for elites to have been engaged in war crimes against humanity and the mass destruction of forests, herd animals, insect swarms and all life forms characterised as pests.
So although all generations previous to the 20th century lacked the means to understand anything other that the surface phenomena of life on earth, that is no longer the case, yet despite this knowledge the environmental degradation and destruction continues. It is now well known – among those who want to know – that there is an interconnected web of life-forms, that provides the only material basis for, the essential breathing, eating, drinking and sheltering requirements, that are the foundations upon which all life on earth depends and has existed for millions of years. In contrast to nature, the hierarchical mass society system of life on earth, has resembled a slow, unintended form of multi-species suicide. But how and why? The clue to understanding and answering this pressing existential contradiction of genocide and ecocide destruction, I suggest, lies in the practical and theoretical dualistic bifurcation of life on earth. There has been a long standing clash between humanities necessary socio-biological material existence and humanities current competitive social and intellectual form of existence.
In retrospect, the social detour humanity made by departing from one predominantly biologically determined, egalitarian social existence and adopting a predominantly hierarchical sociologically and intellectually determined existence, was doubly profound. However, this transformation was not simply a change in the mode of ensuring the biological necessities of living for the human species, as most intellectually focussed humans have persistently assumed, something changed qualitatively. In the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, a number of alienations of the human essence also occurred which moved humanity away from their original natural essence as biological entities. Unlike other ape and mammal species, which remained at peace with each other and with nature, the human species commenced a career of actually being at war with it’s own species and being metaphorically at war with nature.
What occurred to those being recruited to join the hierarchical mass society form was not only a complex change in humanities mode of production, but also in their modes of being and modes of thinking. Having made themselves different and successful by their settled mode of agricultural production, it only needed a further series of thoughts to reach the conclusion that they were not just different, but also very special. This in turn introduced an altered self-perception of their hierarchically organised selves as a uniquely privileged sub-species of humanity and as having a privileged propriatory relationship over the rest of the natural species around them. As noted above, this altered self-perception of uniqueness and privilege culminated in origin myths of supernatural creation and blessing, by invisible all powerful gods, as interpreted by their human kings and priestly agents.
It is revealing that all current mass religious tendencies were founded as a result of this hierarchical mass socio-economic transition. The double nature of this socio-economic change and its implications is something that was never adequately understood or articulated by any of the ancient or modern trends of anthropocentric thinking, hence it never went further than dropping animalistic and goddess entities and perpetuating, refining and moderating the basic monotheistic patriarchal myths of that ancient period. This general intellectual inadequacy extended to the dialectics of anticapitalist thinking pioneered by Karl Marx and upheld by subsequent anti-capitalist trends. It remains exclusively a socially and anthropocentrically created form of dialectical thinking, which even at its best continually sidelines the biological dimension of life on earth and at worst – permanently excludes it.
The intellectual path to understanding the wayward results of this millennia old practical and conceptual bifurcation between humanities biological levels of living and understanding and humanities late stage sociological/hierarchical forms of living, is far from straightforward. The path back to living and thinking of ourselves as part of the biology of life on earth, as a whole, has been convoluted and strewn with practical and intellectual obstacles. The dualistic frameworks of thinking accepted by all types of anthropocentric tendencies amount to a series of dead ends and cul-de-sacs, which lead nowhere new. I therefore suggest it has become necessary to consider the 19th century practices which underlie Marx’s concepts of Estrangement, Alienation and Dehumanisation and how his 19th century lucid level of social and economic understanding unavoidably lacked a strong and detailed biological foundation and which led him to perpetuate a version of the common sociologically derived anthropocentric inversion of reality.
Estrangement, Alienation and Dehumanisation
When considering the the initial and later intellectual developments of Karl Marx (and his and later generations), it is useful to recognise what had taken place within the economic and social context of 19th century Europe. The European landmass by that period of history, had been penetrated by the capitalist mode of production for several centuries. Therefore, the capitalist mode of production by that time, was moderately well advanced in terms of science, technology and industrial levels of socialised production. This (by then) the most modern mode of production was therefore, regularly creating ever new ‘wonders’ of mass produced building, manufacturing, transport and storage, and it was doing so on an international basis.
In 1851 a ‘Great Exhibition’ was held in London at which these so-called ‘wonders’ of industrial craftsmanship and technical expertise, from most European nations, were displayed at a dazzling and spectacular venue self-confidently named ‘The Crystal Palace”. The bourgeoisie epitomised the extreme forms of narcissistic, uncritical self-love that humanity had cultivated about itself since Babylon and the Seven Wonders of the world, and flatteringly invented the myth that a supernatural being had created their species and that some of their species were ‘chosen’. However, this much lauded technological and scientific progress in Bourgeois forms of production, simultaneously came at tremendous social and ecological costs.
The openly visible socio-economic conditions of this industrial system were creating not only extreme wealth for the bourgeoisie, but alongside this conspicuous glitter, euphoria and consumption, grew the extreme poverty, degradation and deprivation of a new labouring class whose survival had been threatened by being freed from their former rural cottages, allotment gardens and common land gleanings. They were no longer metaphorically chained to the land or to each other, but became harnessed to the need to earn money to buy things they could previously grow. The labouring populations throughout Europe later the globe, had been ‘freed’ from rural living by the demolitions of their cottages and the enclosures of the common land by elites. These now sturdy – homeless – beggars became by various means the industrial working classes of Europe and then the world.
These redundant agricultural labouring classes had then become available to be employed in the ‘dark satanic’ mills and deep, dark mines etc., of those countries which became dominated by the bourgeois classes in Europe and elsewhere. These bourgeois classes were the elites who by means of an industrial revolution transformed individually produced products into mass produced commodies and human skills into mass concentrations of wage labour and an elite whose future wealth came from possessing money rather than possessing land. Human conditions became so stark within these new ‘advanced’ (sic) system of industrialised production that a point had been reached where these conditions could no longer be gnored or tolerated by the non-elite masses. Forms of resistance to these conditions became varied and persistent.
Marx, for example, along with a number of other middle-class intellectuals and some workers became focussed upon two aspects of the capitalist system. First, was the task of understanding how these contradictory extremes had materialised and intensified. Second, how these extremes might be alleviated or removed. Some of those among the 19th century social activists sought to persuade the ruling bourgeois class ‘to voluntarily’ reform the worst aspects of capitalistic working procedures; yet others, and among these Marx, sought to force a reform’ of the worst features, by supporting working class strikes and revolutionary challenges to this new system.
Marx also decided to thoroughly analyse the functioning of the capitalist mode of production in order to understand its strengths, weaknesses and the future possibilities of this prolific method of human production, once it had been taken out of the control of the capitalist classes. The main results of his lengthy economic studies, were eventually published in a three volume analytic work entitled Das Capital, together with three further volumes of notes on ‘Theories of Surplus Value’ and a preliminary version known as the Grundrisse. That was not all. During more than several decades of research on economics and politics, he made extensive personal notes and comments, that eventually led to his later published writings. Some of which will be referred to in this lengthy four part article.
However, in the following critical examination of Marx’s intellectual progress whilst analysing the capitalist mode of production, and in understanding the conclusions he eventually reached, it is important that the reader broadly understands the period in which he lived. The 20th century socio-economic and cultural background was still limited in its breadth and depth of carefully considered knowledge and the visual perceptions available to humanity. In systematically considering life on earth during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, it needs to be remembered that researchers had extremely limited instruments to assist them. It was also a time in which economic and financial booms, slumps, and economic crises became frequent and predictable. Both created barriers to the development of critical thinking concerning life on earth in general and in particular areas.
There were limited technical aids available in order to closely study any practical phenomenon that lay below the immediate surface appearances of organic and inorganic materials. Consequently, the billions of complex and varied microscopic cells and molecular particles, that we now know exist within the organic structures of life forms and the structural composition of inorganic materials, were practically unknown. It is important to recognise and understand the implications of this limitation for the development of thinking and communicating that life on earth in the form of the human species. For humanity, as with all other species, their bio-chemically evolved sensory organs did not develop to perceive the underlying complexities and intricacies living and functioning below the surface phenomenon of inorganic materials and below the surface phenomenon of other organic species.
The human eye and its optic nerve connections to the central processing/storing systems of the brain complex, over millions of years of biological evolution, had only evolved in response to the things around our species that were large enough to be useful, neutral or dangerous to the hominid and Homo sapien species. That was all that these animal species had needed for millions of years in order to become successful enough to evolve into a vocally articulate human species with significant physical adaptations, but none which could penetrate well beyond surface phenomenon. Consequently, it is obvious that intellectuals and explorers of the pre-and post 19th century periods of human history could only discuss, understand, evaluate and accurately record what they could see or identify with their unaided senses.
Human eyes in particular are devoid of assistance to see below the surface of things even when glass-ground magnifying glasses, became available. The microscopic complexity and sheer volume of different cells, particles and distant galactic bodies within the disciplines of Biology, Geology, and Cosmology, lacked sufficient technical magnification to reveal their complexity and sophistication to the human eye and thus to be contemplated by the human brain. Indeed, the astronomical number of cells, dendrites and synaptic gaps within the various sections of the human brain that stored and processed the continuous sensory inputs recieved from eyes, ears, touch and sound were totally unknown.
The microscopic organic Prokariotic and Eukariotic cells, their minute, self-replicating internal organelles, its self-replicating lipid membranes, its DNA enclosed nucleus and other internal symbiotic functioning clusters within all living organisms and the self reproducing cells in all organisms, were invisible. Researchers had to wait until the 20th century development of the scanning electron microscope for any human being to be able to see, consider and to eventually begin to comprehend, the detailed complexity, sophistication and inter connective biological essence of all species of life forms that had evolved within the planets biosphere.
How and why this naturally evolved visual limitation, particularly to the observation, contemplation and understanding of 19th century biology, has been instrumental in contributing to the 21st century outcomes that humanity now faces. Multiple levels of economic, financial, social, ecological and climate change, are not the direct results of the activities of cells, but their complexity needs to be understood in considering these larger issues. In short due to this visual limitation in understanding the amazing sophistication, complexity and the extent of earths interconnected species-rich biosphere, humanity had placed it’s own species social technology on a higher level of complexity and sophistication than the rest of nature and to its subsequent detriment.
Just how this inversion of reality occurred and how the resulting symptoms of this inversion falsified the intellectual understanding of life on earth, will become much clearer as we continue to trace the development of Marx’s 19th century level of understanding of nature in general. This development will also indicate how by those knowledge limitations Marx, like many intellects before him and many after him, considered that the true essence of humanity was to be industrially productive and that the true essence of nature had been to produce humanity. More evidence on the how and why this inversion of the reality of life on earth took place, will be continued in part 3 of this series on the ‘Final countdown of Hierarchical Mass Societies’?
III
In the two previous parts of this article on the estrangement, alienation and dehumanisation of the human species, which has been experienced under all the previous forms of hierarchical mass societies, we ended with noting the importance of Marx. In the 3 volumes of Das Capital, Marx had analysed the capitalist mode of production in forensic detail and that analysis had confirmed the existence of these psycho-social symptoms. In this part 3, I shall present some of Marx’s actual comments and considered opinions on these and on their effect upon humanity.
Estrangement, was identified by Marx as a socially created symptom which occurred when working people who lacked means of production and sufficient natural resources of their own, needed to seek employment from the owner of some form of means of production. On that basis, the worker then had to work for that employer in exchange for money to buy the necessary materials to ensure that his or her (N-M-G-R + A-D) biological processes, were completed. Marx at that stage of his study considered that the natural essence of the human species (as a social species) was to work (or labour) to produce objects from nature, and ‘exchange’ them with each other.
However, under the capitalist mode of production, he stressed that the objects (commodies) the workers produced and the means (tools, buildings, machinery) used to produce them did not belong to the worker but to the employer. Thus Marx concluded from his detailed study of capitalist industrial production, that since the worker was personally estranged from the products he makes, and is also estranged from the ‘means’ of production and also estranged from controlling the pace and method of production, that something significant and un-natural had occured. What had taken place was that the production of essential natural resources had been collectivised by an elite, not by themselves. Consequently as a result of this socio-economic process, the working classes had been estranged from their natural human ‘essence’. The consequences were clear and Marx wrote that the worker;
“Does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortified his body and ruins his mind . The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work and in his work feels outside himself . He feels at home when he is not working and when he is working he does not feel at home.” (Volume 3 of his Complete Works p 274)
Any modern slave or working class ‘wage-slave’ or ‘salary-slave’ for that matter, will have no difficulty in recognising the validity of the critical content of this paragraph and since Marx was not from the working class, he undoubtedly must have deduced or confirmed the authenticity of that hierarchical mass society symptom by listening to more than one worker. I can personally confirm it myself. I loved doing engineering tasks in my dad’s shed and in my own as an adult, but I hated practically every minute of my eventual ten (8 + 2) hour shifts as a wage slave employed at Dehaviland Aircraft Company. Personal feelings aside, the quote above demonstrates a crucial level of understanding of how Marx developed his opinions and theoretical evaluations. Marx studied reality, alongside ideas about reality.
Nevertheless, there has been a tendency among modern intellectuals who declare themselves ‘Marxists, to assume that Marx perfected his most important ideas and theories by studying other talented intellectuals and philosophers. Therefore, there are books and articles on the importance of the influence of Hegel, Epicurus and other philosophers upon Marx’s theoretical conclusions. However, these books, articles etc., are usually written by intellectuals, but then intellectuals are bound to reach such intellectual conclusions – aren’t they? However, in reality the main and fundamental influence on Marx’s theories and evaluations was a deep and consistent perusal and then a serious study of reality, not a deep and consistent perusal and study of philosophers or sociologists. In fact he made a number of comments on that issue, such as;
“When reality is described, a self-sufficient philosophy loses its medium of existence.” (Marx/ Engels. Collected Works. Volume 5 p37)
But of course to describe ‘reality’ in the more modern context, it is frequently necessary to see below the surface phenomenon of reality and thus while human beings lacked the instruments to see below the surface of nature, their understanding of it remained seriously limited. Moreover, the limited 19th century understanding of human biology and the complex inter-connected and interdependent biology of nature was made clear by the following quote by Marx.
“Thus society is the complete unity of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature – the accomplished naturalism of man and the accomplished humanism of nature………Industry is the actual, historical relationship of nature and therefore of natural science to man. If, therefore, industry is conceived as the esoteric revelation of man’s essential powers, we also gain an understanding of the human essence of nature, or the natural essence of man.” (Marx. Collected Works. Volume 3, page 298 and 303. Emphasis added. RR)
One particular social achievement by a section of the human species (industrial production) was being interpreted by Marx as the natural outcome of biological evolution and (‘industrial society was judged the “true resurrection of nature”). We now know that hierarchical mass societies, since the industrial revolution, have been extracting and destroying visible and invisible organic and inorganic nature in huge swathes and is now polluting every part of the biosphere from the upper atmosphere to the deepest ocean depths. The above formulation was no isolated one by Marx, because there are many more such formulations in Marx’s writings, such as Das Capital, the Grundrisse and other notebooks. Here are two more.
“The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present”………”The nature which develops in human history – the genesis of human society – is man’s ‘real’ nature; hence nature as it develops through industry, even though in an ‘estranged’ form, is true anthropological nature.” (ibid p 302/303. Emphasis added)
Already, this opinion by Marx, that the five human senses are not a long process of biological adaptation and evolution of the human species, but a product of the “entire history of the world”, should be ringing alarm bells in the critical faculties of a modern reader. Then the assertion of; “..nature as it develops through industry, even though in an estranged form, is true anthropological nature”, should be stimulating a critical assessment even more alarming. By Marx’s own critical assessment, the capitalist mode of industrial production was the latest, albeit, estranged form of human socio-economic production. Therefore, to imply that once industrial production is rid of estrangement by class divisions its genesis will be an example of humanities “real” nature, can no longer be considered valid or accurate. These and other assertions locates Marx’s concept of estrangement entirely within the millenia-old anthropocentric paradigm of thinking. This next extract confirms it. Marx writes in Das Capital;
“The earth itself, is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour.” (Capital Volume 1.)
The concept that ‘the earth itself is an instrument of labour’, indicates that Marx’s 19th century life-style and thus his social consciousness had themselves also been ‘estranged’ from nature. Any hunter-gatherer people would know that the earth is a provider of nutrition, clothing, tools and shelter. They would not regard the earth or the land as an agricultural instrument for creating surplus-value and profit for Medieval and modern land owners. Furthermore, any reasonably educated modern human being would also know that in addition to providing base-line nutrition, the earth, (more specifically the earth’s biosphere) also supports, not only the plants we eat but that some of those plants also provide the oxygenated air we breathe and materials we use for the clothes we wear.
We can judge from these extracts by Marx, (and many others) that the 19th century advances in science and technology had not advanced very far in the direction of biological and ecological understanding of life on earth. Therefore humanity, in the form of it’s most advanced economic and social critics of the time (Marx and Engels), had little understanding of life on earth from a microscopic level of biological detail. Marx’s Revolutionary-Humanism, although an advance in 19th century thinking at the time was insufficient then to understand the essence of the human species and without significant modification they remain so in the 21st.
Some ‘Marxists’ who have not yet grasped that Marx was advocating an evolving revolutionary perspective in transition, not a finished and final dogma, will also not have realised that the conclusions Marx reached were seriously wrong and had been handicapped by the 19th century general lack of a detailed biological understanding. The anthropocentric fixation and evidence deficient level of human intellectual output was so thorough that for generations sociological thinking in the form of the Abrahamic monotheisms and other such isms, had been inadequate for a more rounded understanding life on earth. Anthropocentric focussed ideas, following anthropocentric hierarchical socio-economic practices had intellectually separated human hierarchical mass societies from nature and nature from hierarchical mass society humanity.
The real world intellectual development of the human species had created a mystical God to explain humanities existence and the existence of other species within nature; and this reality had been imagined in reverse. Instead of real human beings creating the idea of an all powerful male God, a myth was created that an all powerful male God had created humans and a bountiful nature. Anthropocentric thinking was so thoroughly embedded in human intellectual input and output that by the 19th century, despite some people dropping the God as the creative instrument or architect of humanity and nature, they then imagined that nature itself, by species ‘selection’ had become the architect of itself. We now know that biological evolution occurs by bio-chemical, cellular mutations and/or frequent multi-cellular use-adaptations. However, in the mind of Marx, and some others, anthropocentric industrialised social production was viewed as a natural outcome of the evolution of nature.
Yet in actual fact industrial methods of producing commodities from nature are not a natural outcome of biological evolution, but a social outcome of one specific species and during one specific period of its biological evolution. Moreover, it is only this hierarchical mass society period of history which has produced outcomes severely detrimental to biological processes of life on earth in general and to the continued extinctions of many biological organisms – including it’s own species in particular, by war and genocide. But the long term incorrect anthropocentric interpretation of the essence of humanity – as a socially evolving organism – rather than a biologically evolving organism has culminated in the following symptoms of hierarchical mass society living. The estrangement of individuals from each other and the intellectual ‘estrangement’ of humanity from it’s own biological roots.
Which side are you on?
A recent article on the US/Israel elite missile bombardment of Iran, by a left wing author who quotes Lenin, demonstrates that the total estrangement of humans from each other extends to the left as well as the right. It also indicates how confused much of the old cold war left has become in regard to hierarchical mass society elites and the cold-war concepts they are still clinging on to He asserts the following;
“Which side are you on? Iran is not just Israel’s war, friends. It’s not even America’s war. It’s the Empire’s.”….”Give Iran and other opponents of the Empire critical support”.(Counterpunch 28/3/2026)
The author represents a misguided section of the left who continue to view the American Imperialist elites as the 20th centuries residual problem and that any other elites who oppose American elites should be supported. This suggestion ignores an obvious fact. All elites are ruthlessly oppressing and exploiting their own working populations, men, women and children and now in 2026 the three elites in the US, Israel and Iran are also raining down drone and missile munitions on the men, women and children under the rule of those opposed to them. The fact that some left individuals and blogs are publishing intellectual material which advocates taking the side of any modern elites or to give them critical support is to give support to the oppressors and remove it from the oppressed. The suggestion also gives support to a repeatedly failed ‘lesser evil’ strategy of the past, whilst avoiding the task of developing new strategies to support the victims on all sides, not the elites on any side.
‘Which side are you on’ is a tactic both the Bourgeoisie and Bolsheviks used historically to divide oppressed communities from each other and get activists to campaign for the interests of one elite over another. It’s a repeat of the one used by those left dualist thinking activists who advocated support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine because the American elite had chosen to support Ukraine’s elite. The crude dualistic tactic of abandoning revolutionary-humanist principles and giving ones allegiance to the enemy of ones enemy does not make them a friend. It never has done and it never will do.
https://classautonomy.info/why-we-stand-with-people-not-states-an-anarchist-critique-of-campism
Furthermore, this ersatz tactic also draws attention away from the fact that supporting either sides missile barrages effectively supports the fact that once again huge financial and material resources are being directed away from both sides civilian populations and the materials being blown to pieces are people, (whether as soldiers or civilians) and the infrastructure destruction involved is further polluting the air, soil and seas of an already over polluted middle east region. And it is a region whose connections to other regions by ocean currents and atmospheric winds will circulate this pollution around the entire planet.
To return to the above noted historic detour of humanity from a naturally evolved essence to a socially evolved, hierarchically divided essence, it is important to realise that it has allowed generations of similarly mistaken and evidence-lacking elite-supporters to invent semi-permanent socially constructed distinctions, with disastrous results. Religions, races, nations and classes have been presented as naturally occurring definitive identifyers which have become the causes of irreconcilable divisions within our one biological species. The divisions within humanity into the above competing and even warring sections, is neither a biological symptom, nor a social imperative in general. These symptoms have arisen from just one particular social form of living and producing which no other species of social, plant, fungus, insect or animal of the millions in existence have developed.
This fact alone indicates that such competitive characteristics and warlike divisions are not natural, or biologically induced, but are based primarily on the socio-economic divisions of labour created and upheld by elites within the current plethora of hierarchical mass societies. Even the biological bifurcation of the human species for biological reproduction, has been negatively socialised by hierarchical mass society elites into permanent gender divisions which mirror its patriarchal mode of production.
The crucial historic omission of a more complete and detailed understanding of the complex biological inter-dependence of life on earth as a whole, is being felt not only within and between human communities in the form of wars and genocides, but between the human species and the rest of our biological species cousins – both distant and close. The hierarchical mass society economic system has for generations been systematically killing macro-organisms that we live on by eating and breathing their products and microorganisms that are in us, digesting our food, and consuming or neutralising problematic viruses and bacteria.
The fact is, therefore, that we and our other life form pets have never been physically estranged from the biology of nature and we are still not in any full physical or material sense. Only in the practices of our hierarchical mass society systems and in the ideologies their elites propagate, have we become physically, emotionally and intellectually estranged from each other as a single human species and estranged from those millions of other species we depend upon for eating, breathing, sheltering and for curing us when we are ill.
The true reality of the essence of the human species, once critically and seriously examined, is both biological and social and the biological essence is fundamental and primary. Our own personal existence verifies this. Individually we all start off from a single unfertilised female biological cell, (the ovum) when this biological cell is fertilised by a male biological sperm cell, we each develop into a multicellular biological entity, which continues to live within another multi-cellular biological being, the female human body until birth.
Only after birth do we, as a gendered biological species-being, enter into an additional social community and tentatively begin our sociological estrangement and conditioning. Each species of human biological being goes through the same identical process. None of us at birth subscribe to a religion, a culture, a class, or a prejudiced opinion. None of us are born aggressive, racist, sexist, nationalist, fascist, opinionated, disrespectful, vegetarian or carnivore. These are all socially transmitted, dis-eases, from our biological entropy.
Every human being on every part of the planet during every generation, before or since we evolved into the Homo sapien species has had to be socialised into these 13 socially created characteristics and the many more I have not listed. Once we understand the concept of ‘estrangement’ from our natural biological essence it also becomes clear that many of the negative characteristics listed above are the results of various forms of hierarchical mass society induced estrangement. The importance of incorrectly recognising and misunderstanding the two essential essences of humanity – the biological and the social – now becomes clear. The concepts are being used in order to confuse and kill many of us.
Furthermore, the fact that the biological essence of humanity is primary (and natural) and the social is secondary (and learned), makes the following suggestions obvious. That a) the entire biological realm of life on earth of which we are an integral part and upon which we depend for nutrition, protection and breathing, needs to be protected from destruction, extinction and pollution. That b) the fact that the social is secondary and learned means that destruction, over-extraction and overproduction are not biologically or economically inevitable and therefore can be both unlearned and in future removed from our life-styles.
The human species can, and has in the past, changed their social modes of obtaining their biological processes of Nutrition, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A – D), and can do so again when more of us understand enough to see the need to do so and when we ally ourselves with others who have reached that level of understanding. Amid the current 21st century regurgitation and repetition of the ancient examples of hierarchical mass society excesses and competitive turmoil, which invariably end in wars and genocides, it is tempting to focus on our individual and family survival and those of our local communities. However, the fact that many of us have families means that concern about the future of life on earth in general, is also demonstrating active concern for our families future. For if we do nothing, the younger members of our families and friends are going to be living amid whatever mess they then inherit.
Bequeathing them a social world of banality in which people are either actively or passively and thoughtlessly consuming and exterminating nature and our citizen masses, is not the only alternative. The alternative is to incorporate into our daily struggles – in practice and theory – alternative patterns of living and thinking to the current ones. We can expose and contradict the past and present ‘old world’ social and biological theories and practices within our families and communities and shape a new world’s future in small but positive ways. The old world anthropocentric common sense invites you to expend your non-work energy on supporting the existing hierarchical mass society system by choosing new or different candidates to occupy hierarchical political positions, in the vain attempt to produce different results than the last lot.
The historical record from ancient Sumer, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome indicated that it is the hierarchical mass society form that is the problem for humanity not just who governs them. The hierarchical aristocratic nation states during the Middle Ages, the later bourgeois capitalist ones, the Fascist and Communist ones as well as the current so-called Liberal Democratic and Islamic ones have all confirmed that hierarchical systems, to a lesser or greater degree, perpetuate the estrangement, alienation and dehumanisation of all their citizens.
Furthermore, the idea that revolutions in living are top-down creations created and/or led by elite individuals is historical and ideological nonsense. Revolutions in living and ‘being’ are always small scale, local individual or community led initiatives, that if successful, are replicated by others until each small transition links up and becomes parts of an inter-connected movement for change. So don’t think you have to think big; think small; and do it! Just don’t destroy nature whilst doing it and nature will become a pleasure not a wasteland.
IV
This series of articles follows on from the logic developed in my latest book, ‘Life on Earth (Past, Present and Future)’. For more details see those at the end of this article. The book dealt with life on earth from its billion year old, bio-chemical and biological beginnings emerging from inorganic planetary materials into single cell Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic forms, and on to the evolution of multi-cellular plants, insects and animals. The research for the book established that in essence life on earth was a biological phenomenon and that all life forms had a common six stage biological process of existence comprising of Nutritional intake; Metabolic processing of the nutrition; Growth and re-growth of cells; a Reproductive process; an Ageing process; and a process of Dying. For ease of use this biological process was abbreviated to (N-M-G-R + A-D)
In addition, sections of that book dealt with the social organisation of the human species from the pre-historic period of hunter-gatherer and herding societies, before focussing on the development of settled agricultural communities. The notable difference between the two modes was that the latter communities became the first (and only) form of species social aggregation in which a hierarchical class forcefully dominated this form of mass society and continues to this day. These class divided societies began in the global west of the world within the middle and near east, Fertile Crescent region. The book then traced the turbulent and brutal historical record of these hierarchical mass societies in considerable detail before pointing out the fundamental contradictions inherent within all examples of this particular social form.
A particularly problematic biological contradiction arose because in addition to the daily needs of their ordinary working communities, the extra quality and quantity (luxury) demands and needs of the elite class, far exceeded what local nutritional and non-nutritional resources could naturally supply. The introduction of this excessive social demand (for palaces, finery, ornamentation, conspicuous consumption, royal entertainment) from local natural resources meant ever larger natural resources (whether already occupied or not) were used, needed and taken.
Territorial expansion and resource acquisition therefore became an existential requirement for the continuation and development all hierarchical mass society settlements, either ancient or modern. This requirement in turn led to annexations, deforestations, internicine wars, slavery and occasional local genocides by even small city states, such as ancient, Athens, Troy etc. The population/resource pressure was even greater when some of those Fertile Crescent city states eventually developed into regional empires, such as Egypt, Persia, Macedonia, Greece and Rome etc.
Incidentally, whilst Marx was correct in pointing out the errors of Malthus who in the 19th century had argued that overpopulation was caused by the fact that human reproductive rates appeared to be geometrical and the reproductive rates of the edible species to feed them appeared to be arithmetical. Malthus therefore thought this biological mismatch would lead to catastrophic overpopulation, famine and starvation, however in my opinion Marx was wrong to call him stupid. I am no fan of Malthus myself, but although Malthus had not understood the problem in full (nor had Marx or anyone else at the time) Malthus was not stupid or wrong in spotting a potential problem with hierarchical mass society levels of production and consumption. The elements missing from Malthus’s (and Marx’s) 19th century evaluations were four in number. 1. The increased rate and mass of extraction and consumption of natural resources, due to industrial methods and to elite greed; 2. The increasing rate and mass of industrial pollution; 3. The increasing rate and mass of essential species extinctions along with the habitat disruptions and collapses of other species,; and 4. The finite limits of the planets biosphere to supply an infinite rate of human created demand.
The Metabolic Rift hypothesis
Although Malthus is no longer considered relevant, there is a trend of left, pro-Marxist thinking, which considers that the current ecological problem facing life on earth in general has been caused by the capitalist mode of production which they claim has created a metabolic rift between capitalist societies and nature and that this metabolic rift had been previously identified by the revolutionary-humanist thinker, Karl Marx. I have not yet found any convincing evidence of a connection between Marx’s views on production, ecological destruction and a metabolic rift. Indeed, in my research, that term was not used by Marx in any of his works. For this reason it seems to me that the term itself is an entirely modern fabrication by those intellectuals who are grasping at the equivalent of ‘straws’ to try to make themselves and Marx relevant to modern ecological concerns.
I suggest that the works of Marx are significant, comprehensive and valuable enough without trying to pin on them a modern version of a form of dogmatic Marxism, particularly as he is unable to disagree and refute such an interpretation. Refutation of mistaken assumptions about him was a process Marx frequently undertook while he was still alive. Meanwhile, it is worth considering the argument put forward by this modern metabolic rift trend. It is along the lines of; ‘capitalism is massively disrupting essential exchanges of matter and energy between society and the rest of nature, which is putting the entire Earth System in danger….Metabolic Rifts offers a scientific basis for understanding the deep causes of today’s environmental crises’. Does it? We shall see! The exchange of matter and energy within the entire biosphere of earth includes the bio-chemical carbon and nitrogen cycles which are predominantly regulated by plant organisms, which take in and exude elements of these gasses to produce with other inputs an oxygenated atmosphere within an ecologically balanced biosphere.
It is true that deforestation and desertification, monoculture production as well as sea pollution disturb the quantity, quality and balance of these natural gaseous processes, but this destabilisation was occuring long before the capitalist mode of production was adopted by hierarchical mass society elites. Just think of how many forests were decimated just to supply the ancient thousand strong fleets of huge triple-decked trireme’s, operated by many sides in the Greek Peloponnesian wars, or the fleets of huge entertainment and haulage vessels of the many elite orchestrated thousand year long Egyptian Dynasties. Just to float the granite blocks from quarries to the sites of pyramid and palace building, over decades of building would have cleared a forest or two. Logic suggests that if the mass of earths plant life forms become insufficient to absorb the mass of carbonic acid exhaled by animal life forms, then plant nourishment sources have also been drastically reduced along with any reduced production of oxygen by them.
Any rifts and disturbances in the carbon and nitrogen biological cycles were not the cause but the result of the over extraction of plant life by all hierachical mass societies and this continued throughout the Roman Empire and late middle ages and was particularly accelerated during the wooden ship seafaring, and gunship antics of the late medieval merchant trader period. Not a few forests must have been cut down to manufacture the Spanish, Portugese, French, Dutch and English fighting and trading ships of the late feudal and pre-capitalist countries of Europe as they fought each other to control and consume natural materials, wherever the wind, tides and a compass would take them. To claim that the capitalist mode of production within a long succession of hierarchical mass societies was the factor that introduced the ecological and environmental instability into the bio-chemical balance of life on earth, is to have failed to understand the biological structure of life on earth and the disturbance of it by a particular long-standing hierarchical social form of human aggregation, a form that began long before the merchant capitalists of Holland, Portugal and Venice started to accumulate their wealth in the form of capital.
Nevertheless, the concept of metabolism is not commonly used in everyday discussions on politics, social, economic, or medical affairs, so it is worth establishing what the concept normally refers to, when discussing life on earth. Metabolism refers to the ‘chemical changes which take place within or between microscopic biological cells when food or protoplasm is broken down within them and the resulting constituent materials are then reassembled and built up in living organisms to create and replace essential energy and tissue requirements, or excreted as waste.’ This complex metabolic process is a constant feature of all living creatures – without exception – and it is happening to me as I write and to you as you read this sentence and it continues on a 24/7 annual life-long basis. Is it not amazing that these complex and sophisticated microscopic cells within biological organisms, keep on keeping us alive and functioning on a couple of modest balanced meals per day?
Nevertheless, whether we are familiar with the concept or not, the terms metabolism and metabolic are those used to identify specific biological processes at the microscopic unseen level, although this does not mean the term could not be used metaphorically to serve other non-biological or social purposes. However, in such an extended use the term would then lose its biological specificity and become an abstraction. The term ‘rift’ is normally used to designate a physical crack, or an opening, a cleavage such as the ‘rift valley’. The term has also been used to describe a disagreement or discord occuring within human affairs. Such as, for example; ‘my criticism of the use of the term Metabolic Rift might well cause an intellectual ‘rift’ or deepen an existing one between myself and other commentators on the current causes of ecological disturbances and species extinctions.
But, however we define it, the term metabolic-rift is nonetheless the deliberate combining of a description of a biological/organic process (metabolism) with a non-biological inorganic physical process, (cleavages). However, although on first hearing or reading, the term may sound impressive, I suggest that it does not convey any easily understood or generally accepted meaning. It is tempting, therefore to provisionally consider that it may fall into the intellectual category of ‘a jargon of authenticity’ type aphorism. So for the moment I think it best not to consider what some intellectuals choose to write about Marx, but what Marx himself wrote about the link between human social production under the capitalist mode of production, and the human consumption of natural resources.
Marx on consumption and Industrial production.
“Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant. It is clear that in taking in food, for example, which is a form of consumption, the human being produces his own body. But this is also true of every kind of consumption which in one way or another produces human beings in some particular aspect.” (Marx. Grundrisse. Introduction. Emphasis added. RR)
And;
“As soon as consumption emerges from its initial state of natural crudity and immediacy – and, if it remained at that stage, this would be because production itself had been arrested there.” (Marx. Grundrisse; Introduction.)
And;
“The actual wealth of society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus labour, but upon its productivity and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed…..Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.” (Marx. Capital volume 3. Emphasis added. RR)
The possibility of a ‘constantly expanding reproduction processes’ appears not to have rung any ecological or pollution alarm bells for Marx in the 19th century and sadly his disparaging description of hunter-gatherer peoples as ‘savages wrestling with Nature’ is just another anthropocentric dismissal of our highly intelligent homo sapien ancestors. Just because such modern arrogance was often par for the course within 19th century intellectual discourse, doesn’t make it acceptable or true. More to the point, nowhere, in Marx’s extensive and provisional Grundrisse notebooks is Metabolism mentioned nor rift. Although the phrase; ..”consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant”, in the above quote, does indicate that Marx was fully aware of the bio-chemical metabolic procesess involved in the metabolism of plant nutrition and human nutrition, he does so without mentioning the term.
Personally, I think it is highly significant that although Marx specifically describes the metabolic process of taking in food, and chemical substances, in order to produce the body of the plant, he makes no specific mention of the term metabolism which is the only appropriate term for the process he is describing. Nor does he mention the possibility or actuality of a ‘rift’. Moreover, no mention is made of it in any of the later three volumes of Das Capital nor in the three volumes of Theories of Surplus-value. However, the following quotes from Marx, do indicate his positive assessment of the relationship between capitalist industry and nature, and these contain not even a hint of a metabolic rift. I suggest this terminological abscence throws considerable doubts upon the claims being made by some intellectuals, that Marx endorsed the use of this term as an accusation against capitalist industry. For example;
“Industry is the actual, historical relationship of nature and therefore of natural science to man.” (Marx. Collected Works. Volume 3, page 298 and 303. Emphasis added. RR)
And;
“The earth itself is an instrument of labour. (Marx. Capital volume 1. Page Emphasis added RR)
And;
“…nature as it develops through industry, even though in an ‘estranged’ form, is true anthropological nature.” (Marx. Collected Works. Volume 3, page 298 and 303. Emphasis added. RR)
The ‘estrangement’ Marx notes in the last quote above, cannot be construed as an oblique or confused reference to a metabolic rift between humanity and nature in general, because Marx did not express confusion in any of his early notes or later mature works. In this particular case he was referring to the rift between working and producing humanity and a particular mode of production, which had ‘estranged’ the worker from the means (and purposes) of production. Yet even with the existence of that form of human ‘estrangement’, Marx considered that human capital intensive industry was a true anthropological expression of nature and not a metabolic rift with it. Based upon my own assessment of his extremely extensive writings, had Marx thought differently, he would have said so explicitly.
Indeed, Engels, a close friend and dedicated collaborator with Marx also mentioned the biological process of metabolism without ever using the term itself. In explaining the dialectic process within nature, Engels wrote the following;
“….every organic being is every moment the same and not the same; every moment it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time the matter of its body is completely renewed, and is replaced by other molecules of matter, so that every organic being is always itself, and yet something other than itself.” (Engels. AntiDuhring. )
The ‘matter supplied from without’ is material comprising of molecules which are considered nutritional in larger organisms, and the replacement by other molecules are those proteins, minerals and carbohydrates synthesised by the metabolising process, inside the particular cells in question. Any ‘rift’ in that metabolic process would be purely an individual, molecular or biological processing failure or breakdown within a living organism , not a species wide or social system failure. As previously noted, a further problem with dubiously linking the concept of metabolic rift directly with the capitalist mode of production and directly with Marx, is that it assumes that ecological destruction, excessive extraction, production, consumption and pollution were not alteady taking place prior to the onset of capitalism. In fact the historical record of ancient hierarchical mass societies and empires that were being created, were also collapsing and leaving behind them desertification, forest extinctions and soil contamination, all whilst extracting more natural resources that could be naturally or artificially reproduced.
Marx and Feuerbach
In this last section I also wish to draw attention to an interesting anomaly. In previous parts I have pointed out the negative role of those anti-capitalist intellectuals and activists in the tradition of Karl Marx, such as Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky and their later 20th century followers who had no idea about the importance of understanding the biological essence of humanity nor of humanities absolute reliance on a multi-species, ecologically-balanced biosphere. I include myself in that detailed knowledge deficiency in the first half of my life as worker and activist. In part 3 of this series I also drew attention to the severe limitations of biological and ecological knowledge during the 19th century period in which that particular generation of anti-capitalist activists grew up and matured. However, it needs to remembered that despite those almost universal limitations there were some intellectuals in the 19th century, that did not succumb entirely to the dualistic bifurcation of humanity and nature which most revolutionary thinkers and activists had done.
In fact one of the intellectuals who differed from Marx in this respect was someone he admired to such a degree that he drew up a series of Theses which he named after this intellectual. They became known as the eleven ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ by Marx and were named in honour of Ludwig Feuerbach, to whom he later wrote a letter which contained the following;
“Dear Sir,
I am glad to have an opportunity of assuring you of the great respect – and if I may use the word – love, which I feel for you…..you have provided …..a philosophical basis for socialism….the concept of the human species brought down from the heaven of abstraction to the real earth, what is this but the concept of society…..with best wishes for your well-being.”
Yours, Karl Marx.(Marx/Engels. Collected Works.Volume 3. Page 354-357)
Clearly Marx very much appreciated Feuerbach’s approach to the question of understanding Nature and the human species attitudes to it, so it is worth understanding why he had such high regard. The research and one of the books written by Feuerbach which Marx admired bore the title; ‘The essence of Christianity’ and in a chapter on the ‘Creation’ in the Jewish religion of Judaism, Feuerbach had written the following;
“The doctrine of the Creation in its characteristic significance arises only on that stand-point where man in practice makes Nature merely the servant of his will and needs, and hence in thought also degrades it to a mere machine, a mere product of the will. Now its existence is intelligible to him since he explains and interprets it out of himself, in accordance with his own feelings and notions.” (‘The essence of Christianity’ chapter 11, page 112. Emphasis added. RR.)
I think in these days we would classify the essence of the last sentence in the above quote, as the prevalence of an intellectual form of a lack of self-criticism known as confirmation bias. This form of prejudice and bias within human intellectual production only selects and accepts evidence and opinion that confirms what is wanted or expected to be true or valid. Political movements of all complexions, left, right and centre, including religions and even Marxisms, are replete with confirmation biases. The self-critical Feuerbach also rhetorically asked the following question;
“The question, Whence is Nature or the world?….Why does it exist? But this wonder, this question, arises only where man has separated himself from Nature and made it an object of will.” (ibid page 113/114)
Feuerbach in the 19th century had recognised that humanity at some stage had “in practice made nature a servant of his will and needs”. Clearly the practice of making nature a servant of humanity being referenced there, had been initiated before, during or after the historic transition from hunter-gatherer nomadic and semi-nomadic communities to settled agricultural farming communities when hierarchical mass society structures had been formed. Prior to that the the human species did not treat nature as an object of will or as a machine for wealth production. This change only occured due to a transition between nomadic and settled existence which is mythically recorded in the Judaic Torah/Old Testament narratives of having a pastorialist wandering life-style and a mobile Ark of the Covenant to carry around with them.
I suggest it is important to take a moment to note some revealing common industrial language used by Feuerbach and Marx in the above extracts. We have Nature described as an object and a machine by Feuerbach and Nature as an instrument of labour, by Marx. But also note the subtle difference between how they had phrased them. For Feuerbach humanity had decided to treat nature as an object – out of unadulterated egoism; for Marx, nature was already assumed to be an instrument of labour and that nature was already “truly anthropologica!” A further interesting point about the origin of Judaic Monotheism that Feuerbach makes, which is relevant to the 20th and 21st century, particularly with regard to the manifestations of ‘estrangement’ and ‘dehumanisation’, as revealed in the Israeli Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, for example appears in his following statement.
“The belief in a special Divine Providence is the characteristic belief of Judaism. Water divides or rolls itself together like a firm mass, dust is changed into lice, a staff into a serpent, rivers into blood, a rock into a fountain; in the same place it is both light and dark at once, the sun now stands still, now goes backward. And all these contradictions of nature happen for the welfare of Israel, purely at the command of Jehovah, who troubles himself about nothing but Israel, who is nothing but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish people to the exclusion of all other nations – absolute intolerance, the secret essence of monotheism.” (Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity’ page 113/114. Emphasis added. RR.)
The actions of Personified selfishness in not sharing land and the absolute intolerance of the indigenous people of Palestine has been manifested by a majority of Zionist Jews of Israel since the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948 and has continued for eighty years. But notice that Feuerbach identified that the essence of monotheism – not just its Judaic form – is also absolute intolerance and of course there are other forms of monotheism. Is it not the case, that Christian monotheism in the guises of European country colonists were personifications of selfishness and absolute intolerance when they ‘coveted’ the land and resources and made war upon the native Plains, Coastal and Forest Indians of North and South America, and also on the indigenous peoples of Africa and Oceana?
And is not also a fact that most fundamentalist Islamist Muslim monotheists ancient and modern personify forms of selfishness and absolute intolerance against non-Muslims and Apostates from their own creed? Although it is abundantly clear that the 2026 missile attack upon Iran was initiated by a Judaic led Israel and Christian led USA, the Islamic led Iranian elite have also demonstrated their own version of personal selfishness and absolute intolerance. In Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and the Gulf States is it not true that these Islamic elites have demonstrated absolute intolerance against their own citizens who are opposed to the regime and for those ordinary citizens of other nations who are opposed to their own elites?
The future: Biology or Sociology first?
As noted in Part 3, of this series, the true reality of the essence of the human species, once critically and seriously examined is both biological and social and the biological essence is fundamental and primary. Our own personal existence verifies this. Individually, we all start off from a single unfertilised female biological cell, (the ovum) when this biological cell is fertilised by a male biological sperm cell, we each develop into a multicellular biological entity, which continues to live within another multi-cellular biological being, the female human body until birth.
This truly amazing essential biological process of (N-M-G-R) until birth is the special biological case for every species of human being, in every country, for every generation. The bio-chemical, biological essence of all human beings is the same for all members of the human species. There is no other special biological form. The fact that every cell in every body is comprised of an internal association of organelles and sub-units, does not on present definitions, make cells a social phenomenon. That functioning integration of bio-chemical entities within cells is known as symbiosis.
Only after birth do we, as a gendered biological species-being, enter into an additional consenting social community and tentatively begin our own sociological estrangement and social conditioning. Each species of human biological being goes through the same identical process. None of us at birth subscribe to a religion, a culture, a class, or a prejudiced opinion. None of us are born aggressive, racist, sexist, nationalist, fascist, opinionated, disrespectful, vegetarian or carnivore.
These characteristics are all socially created, socially learned, socially transmitted and in many cases socially enforced. The idea that any religion, culture, gender, nation, or ethnicity are inherently and essentially or biologically different or superior to others, such as Jew or gentile, dark or pale skin tone are just socially constructed narcisistic ideologies of religious or secular social origin. They are not biological and therefore not natural. They are historically derived symptoms of social self-delusion with no biological evidence to support their existence.
Indeed, the global statistics on Covid 19 pandemic deaths, indicated that no countries populations were superior in the potency of their biological immune systems. The global statistics on Covid deaths averaged out at 1,400 deaths per million of population and the fluctuations between the highest and the lowest communities were most likely due to the amount of viral exposure each population was subjected to and/or the individual viral load each infected person suffered from.
In the same way, the seriousness of other morbidities to the health of each infected person was dependent upon the fitness and relative immune functionality due to age and the existence of poverty. The fact that viruses and bacteria are also biological entities that must consume nutrients and can evolve as they are doing so, means that there is no absolute prevention or cure to these type of infections so again prevention and healthy, unpolluted, and unstressed life forms are best suited to the continuation of vibrant communities.
Hierarchical mass societies. The final countdown?
Yet overworked, over stressed, over exhausted, poorly paid working populations are being employed to gouge out ever new or half used resources because that is what all elites need in order to maintain profitable productive output and economic growth. That way all, or most of the elite can continue to increase their wealth. Hierarchical mass societies, unless stopped or by-passed, will continue, as they always have, to increase extraction, production, consumption and pollution, from and of nature . Only now in the 21st century, there are no pristine places to move on to. This year on year process will thus unleash further climate change, shortages of natural resources, epidemics and pandemics.
In addition, there will be further financial crises, economic crises, poverty, social unrest, political authoritarian despotism, wide-scale pollution and ecological species extinctions along with wars and genocides. Moreover, any one of these factors, if large enough or if one or more overlap enough, this too can hasten the final countdown of the hierarchical mass society system. When its internal contradictions start to break through any remaining concensus wishing to conserve the hierarchical mass society form, the beginning of the end will commence – if it has not started already. It’s current and past secular, religious, military, democratic or authoritarian led elitist forms are already at each others throats, some with their fingers ready to reach out toward nuclear missile firing buttons.
Since the hierarchical mass society system’s elites cannot remove a senile president or two, the only serious alternative is by communities creating alternative socio-economic forms which in practice as well as theory has humans engaging with biological nature as one of its constituent biological parts. The past of arrogant narcisistic led social elite-dominated systems is over. We either do little or nothing now or we start changing how we live, think and treat each other and the rest of our biosphere support species. Pioneering alternative small community changes is better than doing nothing or waiting until absolute chaos and desperation drive people into being influenced by aother set of elite demagogues. who promise solutions yet deliver more problems.
The problem is the re-balancing of the human consumption of natural resources, whilst leaving enough reproductive natural resources untouched, so as to be abundantly available for the rest of the biosphere species to survive. The solution is to organise small, local, independent support groups who have fun as well as reading, discussing how to act in ecologically considered ways, who in future can link up with other like minded support groups, without losing their local independence and are able to avoid becoming pawns in some future hierarchical elite-led mass society initiative.
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