The

geology of
the ruling class?

Accepted version. Published in The Anthropocene Review:
http://anr.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/10/08/2053019615607069


Abstract
Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg argued in The Anthropocene Review that the
Anthropocene narrative should be challenged, because the material resources of the
Earth are actually unevenly exploited and consumed, with inequality across classes
and nations. Though there is no disagreement regarding this point, it is argued here
that the implied notion of control of global biogeochemical cycles by the ruling class
is misplaced, and that the most fundamental concept for a critical understanding of
the Anthropocene is fetishism, i. e., the Anthropocene is characterized by a lack of
social (or class) control. We claim also that this theoretical discussion is of utmost
political importance.

Keywords
Anthropocene, inequality, fetishism

Daniel Cunha
Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg made a good and important point in their essay
The geology of mankind?: the exploitation and consumption of material resources
of the Earth is highly uneven across social classes and nations. As they say, intraspecies inequalities are part and parcel of the current ecological crisis; uneven
distribution is a condition for the very existence of modern, fossil-fuel technology
(Malm and Hornborg, 2014), so that the species-being reference of the term
Anthropocene should be considered inadequate. I agree with the point regarding
inequality; it was an extremely important contribution to the Anthropocene debate.
However, I would like to friendly discuss the implied notion of control that is
embedded in their reasoning.
Malm and Hornborg argue that the new energy system that initiated the sociogenic
emissions of global warming could only be installed by the owners of the means of
production; capitalists in a small corner of the Western world invested in steam,
laying the foundation stone for the fossil economy and the privilege of instigating
new rounds [of energy technologies] appears to have stayed with the class ruling
commodity production (Malm and Hornborg, 2014) (emphases mine).1 It appears
that the disturbance of the biogeochemical cycles of the Earth was a subjective choice
of the bourgeoisie. In this respect, Malm and Hornborg remain attached to the

perspective of conscious control (nosphere) proposed by Paul Crutzen (2002).

However, in closer look, this is not the case. When the owners of the means of
production started using coal-powered steam instead of water energy during the
Industrial Revolution, they simply wanted to increase their profits through the
exploitation of cheap labor in cities, what was much more difficult in the faraway and
depopulated vicinity of waterfalls. It was a blind process elusive of the economic
invisible hand: as new mills of the expanding textile industry should get installed
farther and farther from urban centers, where labor power was scarcer and therefore
more expensive, the alternative technology became economically more advantageous:
coal-powered steam was mobile, not tied to the proximity of waterfalls, and therefore
allowed the exploitation of cheaper labor in cities (Malm, 2013). The same way, the
synthesis of fertilizers through the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen (Haber-Bosch
process) had no intention to disturb the nitrogen cycle or to cause the eutrophication
of natural water bodies, but was rather the outcome of a blind dynamics of
proletarianization and cheap food, because cheap food is a prerequisite for cheap
labour and therefore capital accumulation (Moore, 2010). The same for ocean
acidification, aerosol loading in the atmosphere, and so on: controlling (or even
disturbing) the global material cycles of the Earth was never an intention of the ruling
class.
What emerges here is the notion that the so-called Anthropocene is controlled
neither by humanity (antropo) nor by a part of humanity (the ruling class), but is
much more a situation increasingly out of control and a product of unconsciousness
and objectification. They do not know it, but they do it, that is what Marx said
about social relations mediated by commodities (Marx, n.d.). The most fundamental
concept for a critical understanding of the Anthropocene is not inequality after all,
inequality is not in itself incompatible with stewardship , but rather fetishism
(Cunha, 2015). Fetishism, as conceptualized by Karl Marx, is the social process in
which social relations are objectified and inverted: the process of production has
mastery over man, instead of the opposite (Marx, 1990: 175), because the
circulation of money as capital is an end in itself (Marx, 1990: 253). The
accumulation of capital through the exploitation of abstract labor for its own sake
constitutes the automatic subject, self-valorizing value (Marx, 1990: 255). The
bourgeoisie, though favored in distribution of resources with the exploitation of labor,
does not control the form of this social interchange (Postone, 1993; Jappe, 2003).
Before analyzing Malm and Hornborg interpretation of fetishism (a discussion that
might admittedly be harsh for non-Marxists), let me explain why this is crucially
important for the debate about the Anthropocene. There are two levels in which the
Anthropocene narrative should be challenged from a socio-critical perspective. On the
one hand, the inequality of distribution of Earth resources and the different periods of
history and social forms of organization make the use of the all-equalizing term
antropo rather questionable; on the other, the irrationality of the whole social
process, in which even with all knowledge of the dangerous consequences of
sociogenic activities in their current form, very little is changed as this knowledge
gets better and deeper and precious time (and cumulative emissions) go on. In fact,
there are only signs that the disrupting global change is gaining momentum (Stephen
et al, 2015) recently the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere broke the
mark of 400 ppm for the first time since it started to be measured, and the growth rate
from 2012 to 2014 was the highest ever registered over three consecutive years
(NOAA, 2015), in spite of all the alerts that have been made by the scientific
community for decades.


The first level was very well addressed by Malm and Hornborg. I think, though,
that the second level should be more explored. It addresses the somewhat diffuse
feeling of the scientific community that there is something deeply irrational in the
(absence of) attitude of governments and societies in general, considering the dangers
involved. Some scientists expressed this concern regarding the irrationality of societal
reaction to the problem: liberate the science from the economics, finance, and
astrology, stand by the conclusions however uncomfortable (Anderson and Bows,
2012); geoengineering is like a heroin addict finding a new way of cheating his
children out of money (Kintisch, 2010: 57); irrational rejection of well-established
science (Mann, 2014); we have to stop constantly ignoring the things that are truly
harmful to our society (Elger and Schwgerl, 2011). The concept of fetishism allows
a structural explanation of this irrationality that avoids simply assigning it to
subjective (class) domination (in a more Marxist tone) or greed (in more
common-sense language). Contrary to liberal economic thinkers, who invariably
depict capitalism as the ultimate rational system as shown by the expression
optimal allocation of resources, which in the era of the disruption of global material
cycles should be seen as clearly misleading Marx explicitly theorized capitalism as
fetishistic or irrational.2
Malm and Hornborg do mention the fetishistic character of the social process
(though not mentioning it explicitly), quoting Marx: certain social relations appear as
the natural properties of things (Malm and Hornborg, 2014). However, they do so
with an interpretation that fetishism is merely a mental illusion or mystification, a
false consciousness that, once removed, would unveil the real relations of
exploitation. This becomes clear when they immediately afterwards criticize the
mistake of taking the ability to manipulate fire as the trigger of the Anthropocene a
critique of a false historical narrative that does not advance to a critique of the
immanent form of social relations itself. Hence, they refer to the vested interests of
business-as-usual (Malm and Hornborg, 2014). But what vested interests? Who does
not know what fossil fuel companies want? Exxonmobil CEO said it bluntly in an
interview: my philosophy is to make money (CBS News, 2013). This is fetishism:
capital accumulation as an end in itself, abstracting from every social or ecological
consideration.
The Marxian concept of fetishism, therefore, is not to be reduced to false
consciousness or vested interests, though they are part of it. For Marx, to the
producers the social relations between their private labors appear as what they are,
i. e., as material relations between persons and social relations between things
(Marx, 1990: 166); commodity fetishism is not located in our minds, in the way
we (misperceive) reality, but in our social reality itself (Zizek, 2010: 190). But in
Malm and Hornborg interpretation it is, on the contrary, the autonomous movement of
capital that is the illusion, behind which the subjective will of a ruling class (vested
interests) could be unveiled. In a proper reading of fetishism, it is the subjective will
that is reduced to mere appearance in a social process that is quasi-independent of the
subjects involved (Kurz, 1993; Postone 1993).3 The Anthropocene is certainly not the
geology of mankind, as correctly claimed by Malm and Hornborg, but neither is it
the geology of the ruling class. Capitalists execute functions that are beyond their
conscious control.4 Rather, it is a domination without subject (Kurz, 1993), a
geology without geologists or a geology of capital, a blind and uncontrolled
process of material exchange analogous to the invisible hand regarding the
exchange of commodities (Cunha, 2015) and that makes it a problem much more
difficult to overcome than if it were merely a question of subjective power and false

consciousness. The fact that now they know very well what they are doing, yet they
are doing it (iek, 1994: 8) confirms that fetishism is not merely a mental illusion.5
As already said, the concept of fetishism is a powerful tool to explain the
uncontrollable and irrational character of the social (lack of) reactions to the global
environmental (catastrophic) change.
In spite of all that, the Anthropocene embeds a promise. It has been suggested
that the development and integration of Earth System science, mathematical modeling
and telecommunications would allow the constitution of a world subject, who
would solve the climate problem and the general question of stewardship of the Earth
System with the deployment of geocybernetics (Schellnhuber and Kropp 1998;
Schellnhuber 1999).6 But, as formulated by the young Marx, alienated labor tears
from humanity its world subject or, in his words, species-being (Marx, 1992:
322-334).7 The world subject cannot emerge in a society permeated by class
relations and fetishism and therefore characterized by fragmentation and unconscious
social activity. That is why the question of fetishism is more than a scholarly
theoretical discussion, but is also of utmost political importance: if we accept Marxs
critique, only the liberation of human activity (from capital accumulation as an end in
itself) would then be the realization of the world subject or species-becoming and
the actuality of the Anthropocene.8 Of course (and here I agree with Malm and
Hornborg again) this would imply an antagonism with the bourgeoisie, because it
disposes of the means of production that should be transformed and used differently
in order to change the course of the material fluxes of the Earth System. But for this
qualitative change, it is necessary to recognize the alienated form of social activity,
and not only its more favored agents.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for the useful suggestions. Of course, the
author is solely responsible for the content.
Notes
1. I adopt the terminology sociogenic proposed by Malm and Hornborg, rather than
anthropogenic.
2. For Marx, capitalism is a bewitched, distorted and upside down world (Marx, 1991:
969). This is not constrained to the first chapter of Capital about commodity fetishism
the commodity as a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and
theological niceties (Marx, 1990: 163) but proceeds through the whole work all the
way to its third volume, with interest-bearing capital as its most superficial and
fetishized form, a pure automaton (Marx 1991: 523), after depicting the boundless
accumulation of capital as a fetishistic end in itself.
3. It is well known that Marxism has many different branches often conflicting with each
other. The perspective that I use here was inspired by a branch that started in the the
works of the mature Marx (Capital and the Grundrisse) and of the young Gyorg Lukcs
and Isaak Rubin in the 1920s, and was continued through the works of the Frankfurt
School, Guy Debord, Lucio Colletti, Hans-Jurgen Krahl, the Neue Marx Lektre (HansGeorg Backhaus, Helmut Reichelt) up to todays Wertkritik (Robert Kurz, Anselm Jappe,
Roswitha Scholz, Norbert Trenkle, Ernst Lohoff and others), John Holloway, Moishe


Postone, among others, all with their own specificities, some of them calling themselves
post-marxists. More traditional Marxists, however, like Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskists,
Gramscians and others, have never really engaged with the question of fetishism and
would probably disagree with this interpretation and its consequences. I believe, though,
that the perspective dealt with here offers important concepts for the critical
understanding and debate of the Anthropocene for Marxists and non-Marxists.
4. In Marxs own words, capitalists are character [masks] (Marx, 1990: 179),
personifications of economic relations (Marx, 1990: 989).
5. It is an irony of history that the basic science that informs global warming
(thermodynamics) was developed to improve the efficiency of coal-powered steam
engines.
6. Schellnuber and Kropp (1998) suggest that this world subject would be the realization of
the Hegelian Weltgeist. But the Weltgeist is the autonomized movement of capital itself,
the automatic subject, as shown by Postone (1993: 71-83).
7. Later, the mature Marx developed the concept of alienated labor into value-producing
abstract labor and alienation into fetishism, denoting its socially mediating and
historically specific character (Holloway, 2010: 87-99; Colletti, 1992; Marcuse, 1941:
273-287).
8. Dyer-Witheford (2010) suggested the term species-becoming to denote its historical
emergence and reinforce the difference with anthropological interpretations of the
species-being.

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