The Capitalocene and the civilizational crisis in apocalyptic times

Abstract

Perhaps one of the most suggestive debates of recent years is the one surrounding the concepts of “Anthropocene” and “Capitalocene,” which seek to understand the ultimate causes of the socio-environmental and climate disaster the planet Earth is currently undergoing. How should this new geological era be characterized? Is human greed—thus generically defined—responsible for this situation? Or should the focus rather be placed on the analysis and denunciation of capitalism as a historical system, constitutively destructive and irrational? The book El Capitaloceno. Crisis civilizatoria, imperialismo ecológico y límites naturales, written by Renán Vega Cantor, sinks its teeth into this debate and deepens it from multiple angles, based on rigorous research that, while drawing on critical Marxism, also weighs other traditions and currents of thought that offer a careful reading of the ecocidal, climate-altering, consumerist and biodiversity-destroying character of capitalism as a system of multiple domination.