Stuck in the Anthropocene: The Problem of History, Theory, and Practice in Jason W. Moore and John Bellamy Foster’s Eco-Marxism

In looking toward the past, Anthropocenarians recognize how thoroughly past and future human-environment relations are intertwined with one another. Anthropocenarians understand the present moment of the Great Acceleration—the spike in human activity and its impact on Earth system processes following WWII—in light of past human-environment dynamics that have run their course, and they struggle for a more sustainable future. Yet, as this chapter will endeavor to demonstrate, the Anthropocene does not engage a sufficient degree of self-reflexivity with regard to its own historicity. Many Anthropocenarians—in spite of their attempt to understand human-environment relations historically—mistakenly presuppose the struggle for a more sustainable future because they fail to confront the existing state of affairs. Although Anthropocenarians aspire to a more just and sustainable world, absent is an explicit and coherent theory of history.