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In the age of climate change, is the communist hypothesis still relevant? Only a renewed communism, a communism for life - or a "biocommunism" - will enable us to move beyond the ecological crisis of late capitalism. Based on an original reading of founding texts of Marxism, the author launches a critique of the "ontological turn" in ecology. Against Bruno Latour or Donna Haraway, he develops a philosophy for green Marxism based on the centrality of land ownership. The history of societies and the history of nature are intertwined precisely because they have singular trajectories. In a new reading of Karl Marx's exchanges with the populist 'terrorists' in Russia, the cultural studies of Raymond Williams and the Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui's and Ernst Bloch's attachment to the land, the author develops a philosophical naturalism in which human belonging to the Earth is transformed by the ways in which societies appropriate nature. A political strategy is derived from this new philosophy of history: ecological dual power, "ecological soviets", is the communist strategy for getting out of the Anthropocene. Communism must become environmentalism, and political ecology can only become truly revolutionary if it becomes communist.
About the author
Paul Guillibert is a Researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research and teaches philosophy in Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. His work elaborates the philosophy of Marxist political ecology by confronting classical Marxist texts with contemporary ecological humanities.
Report
Paul Guillibert's book has a clear ambition and clearly states his approach: to re-found communist cosmology on a naturalistic basis which, in his view, must take account of nature's own agentivity. The book offers convincing arguments in favour of a reconciliation between the communist goal of emancipation from labour and the ecologist's attachment to the earth. This reconciliation is achieved through a close reading of Marx, particularly his late writings. Tristan Boursier Lectures
