Fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty high old silver, the lone ranger. In the early days of the western United States, the local sheriffs were powerless against the bands of outlaws that roamed the frontier. And it was not until the masked rider of the plane started his great fight for justice that the lives and property of the honest settlers became safe. It was the lone ranger's strength and courage, his daring and resourcefulness that won a final victory for the forces of law and order and made possible the winning of the west. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeach, the great horse Silver, the lone ranger rides again. Come on, Silver! It's going to be trouble! High old Silver! Sheriff Standish had only one prisoner as a result of his efforts to clean up a ruthless gang of cattle thieves. He talked with the man for hours, trying to persuade him to give evidence against the leader of the gang. But the prisoner refused to talk. But hang it all, Sid! It ain't that we got anything much against you. Nothing but attempted murder. We've been all over that, Sheriff. If you'll tell me some of the things I want to know, I'll guarantee that you won't get more than 30 days in jail. Just strong enough to keep you safe and sound during the trial of Dan Jagger. You can't arrest Dan Jagger. He ain't a thing against him. Not now. But we all know he's the leader of the cattle thieves. All I wanted some help from you. Ain't given it. You realize that you can hang? Uh-huh. Or go scot-free? I ain't talking, Sheriff. And it don't matter how long you keep at me. I'm ashamed.  I reckon you must be. You're scared.  You think Dan Jagger can get at you even here in the jail? Call me all the names you like, Sheriff.  He would, too. Not if you squeal so as I can arrest and try and hang him. Some of his gang would get me in that case. You'll hang if you don't talk. I'll take my chances on it.  Well, forget any such notions. He can't, and he won't. Who are you, stranger? Your wife sent some food over, Sheriff. The prisoner's food. Oh, well, put it down on the desk there. I'm staying here behind the bars with the prisoner for the time. Very well. Well, is there anything else? Jagger's around town. Did you know it? What about it? He has an idea of the prisoner's squealing. That ain't so. Ain't no part of it so. Tell him that. Tell Jagger nothing. Who are you, anyhow? I've never seen you around the town before. I just happened by. I saw your wife across the street and the mud was deep. She asked me to bring the food here. Good enough. Close that outer door when you leave. Very well. Mind if I try some of this, too? Looks first-rate. You've got a plenty nerve. Who's sampling my vittles? Hey, you'll leave their stuff be. That's for me. You're welcome to it. There's not a lot of salt in it. I... I hope you choke on it, Blastier. Hey, watch your hand on you. Let me out in here. You stand back while I open the door, Sid. Something's wrong. That food. It tastes poison, perhaps. Great gun. Stranger. Stranger, here.  That was my food. If he's got poison that was meant for me, that's the same as trying to murder me. It's a plot. It's a scheme against my life.  Here, take a drink of the water. Maybe that'll help. Sheriff, listen carefully. This is a trick. It might help you. The prisoner thinks Dan Jagger is going to get him anyway. He might be more willing to talk. Sheriff! Sheriff! Make him tell who poisoned that grub. I get the ID, Stranger. Help me, help man. Him friend, huh? Let the Indian get me out of here, Sheriff. All schemed up, huh? All right, I get you. Me. Me fix him. Come out. Can you carry a man that size, Indian? Me talk, big man. Me take him to a place. Get help. Sheriff! Sheriff! Who poisoned my grub? Who do that to me? I ain't... Sid, you can draw your own conclusions. Maybe the food wasn't poisoned at all. Maybe it was something else that was wrong with the stranger. It was poison. I seen what I seen. Well, suit yourself. You gotta protect me. You gotta see that nobody... Nothing I can do, I ain't doing, Sid. I talked my fool head off trying to make you see that your best course was to put Dan Jagger and the Calaboose on the strength of evidence that you could give. But how can you... I ain't sayin' another word about it now. If he's got the notion that you've been talkin', he'll get you no matter what I'll try to do to safeguard ya. Sheriff. Look, Sheriff. I got things to do. But wait, wait, Sheriff. Listen to me.  No, I wouldn't do that. I'll find another place to hold you till after the Jagger's trial. And he'd hang. If you spoke up as a witness for the state of his trial, there wouldn't be no doubt about it. All right. All right, then I'll tell all I know about Dan Jagger. Try to pison me, will he? Well, now you just listen. Me unto arrest?  You ain't a thing again, me. We'll see about that at the trial, Jagger. Come along now. You don't be sorry about this, you wager. Come on! We want you for murder. Has the jury reached a verdict? We have, Your Honor. We find the prisoner, Dan Jagger, guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment. Sorry, you can't hang me. I'll never hang. I'll get square for this. You, you said you're the one that double-crossed me. I'll get you if I have to come back from my grave to do it. Take him away! Take me away! Go ahead. Trail me. Hang me. But you won't stop me from getting square with that coyote. Make him stop! I'll get you, Sid! I'll get you! Dan Jagger was sentenced to hang and excitement rose to a fever pitch in the town. The lone ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, camped just outside the town, had followed every detail of the trial and, in spite of all the questions that were asked, Dan Jagger didn't tell a thing that would involve anyone else. Yet he must have a huge organization. That's right. People who have been rated by those cattle thieves have said there were as many as 40 men. Oh. Dan Jagger knows them all, but he chose to hang rather than tell anything that would implicate his pals. And that wasn't like Dan Jagger. He's a coward, Tonto.  Him plenty strange. He has a plan of some sort. He feels that something is going to interfere with the hanging. He hasn't any thought of really being executed. What him do? I don't know. The sheriff has certainly brought in men enough to guard against the jailbreak. He's sworn in a dozen new deputies, and everyone is a respectable man who couldn't possibly be associated with the Jagger gang. What we do? Tonto, we're going to stay around this part of the country for the time being. What do? First, we'll make certain the prisoners hang according to the law. Then we'll see what happens. That gang will have to choose a new leader. That's right. Plenty trouble to find new leader, huh? Well, there's likely to be. Tonto Savi. I'm counting on the outlaws fighting among themselves when they try to choose a new leader. But they do. We might be able to learn the identity of some of the other members of the gang. Oh. We might be able to help foil an attempt to save Jagger from the hangman's noose. We'll see. Is the disguise all right, Tonto? Uh, no one know you. They're bringing Jagger to the noose. Where's Sheriff? When the Sheriff himself doesn't come to hangings. He lets the deputy take charge. Everything ready now. There has to be an attempt to rescue Jagger. It'll have to come soon. Jan Jagger, have you anything to say before the sentence of the court is carried out? Yes. Speak quick, then. I got just this to say. A double-crossed snake that's in a jail bought his freedom by squealing on me. Well, he won't enjoy that freedom for long because I'll get him. That don't make sense, Dan. You'll see. You'll see that I'm too powerful to hang. I'm bigger than the law. I'll come back and get to where I was at. I'll get to where the jury that followed me gave me and the judge that said I had to die. Have you got more to say? Now, well then, Dan, may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Well, that's it, Tudor. The law's been carried out. Doctor, look at Jagger now. We'll get out of here, but we'll watch. Now that a new leader has to be chosen, we may get evidence on the rest of the gang. Come on, Tudor. Jagger was hanged for one murder. That won't by any means smash the wrestling gang. All right. What's the matter, Tudor? Tudor, I wonder. You wonder what? Crooks say him come back. I think he expected that he'd be rescued right up to the last minute. Have you another idea? Him not act like him, expect help. No, he didn't at that. Him say come back, get even, get revenge. That's out of the question. Tonto wonder. Strange things have happened in this wild country, Tudor, but, well, I've never yet seen a dead man walk. After the hanging, Sid was brought back to the jail. That night, there was only one man on guard, the sheriff himself. The lone ranger still wearing his disguise, found the lawman in his office. Sheriff, has there been any trouble since this morning? You!  I wanted to see you again. I wanted to shake your hand and thank you for that stunt that led to the capture of Dan Jagger. It didn't work as well as I had hoped, though. Jagger's done for. But the cattle thieves aren't broken up. No, but without a leader. They'll have a new leader. Do you thought anything about Dan Jagger's threats? Threats? He said several times that he'd return and get square. Ah, I don't take no stock and talk of that sort. He seemed to be very serious about it. He's dead. He's buried. Right now, Dan Jagger's in boot hill under six foot of dirt. I know. My deputies had charge, and the doctor examined Dan Jagger. Yes. Whatever he said, don't matter now. Only one thing that interests me right now. What is that? You. And what about me? Sam Hill, are you? What's your name and where'd you come from? If you figure on hanging around this neck of the woods, I'd admire to depotize you. I could use a man with a brain for thinking up schemes like you got. I don't expect to be around here alone. Then what? Let's say that good friends of mine suffered greatly because of the Jagger gang. I promised to do all that I could to smash that gang. Well, we can say that... What the? The prisoner. He's on the floor there. Get this bar door open. Get to him. What's happened anyhow? I swore I'd come back and I'd done so. Dan Jagger! He's riding away from the back of the jail. Hurry, open this door. I am! Do what you can for that prisoner. I'm going after Dan Jagger. Or whoever it was, that threw that knife. All right, so let's get going. Hello, Silver, away! I know. I went after Dan Jagger, but I couldn't find him. No. You did not leave trail? It was dark. I couldn't see tracks. I thought I went in the same direction he did, but I didn't overtake him. Oh, what a strange thing happened here. It was Dan Jagger who stabbed Sid. You go back to jail? Yes. Sid was dead. A knife had been plunged into him through the barred window. Maybe other fellow do it. Dan Jagger didn't want any mistake about who killed Sid. He left things outside the window. Things tell her that he wore when he was buried. He didn't come back from grave. And he couldn't have done that. And yet, every bit of evidence points to the fact that he did. A curtain falls on the first act of our Lone Ranger story. Before the next exciting scenes, please permit us to pause for just a few moments. I'll continue our story. Dan Jagger returned from the dead to murder the man who had convicted him. And the Lone Ranger was unable to follow the killer. He and Tonto returned to their camp. All night long they sat beside the campfire, discussing every possibility in the case. Then, as the first tinge of gray appeared in the eastern sky. Dawn, Tonto. Perhaps we go to the jail together. You might be able to pick up the trail of the killer. Tonto try. It's the only thing I know how to do. We can't find Jagger's trail. And there's one thing left for us. What that? Another man must be hanged in the same way Dan Jagger was. Here, Silver. Yes, Count? We'll put out this fire. We'll leave the things here as they are. We'll be coming back to this camp. You'll wear a mask now? No, Kimisami. And I'll keep on this disguise. I won't wear the mask for this job. Come on, Silver. The people of the town were terror-stricken and kept to their houses as much as possible. Those who had served in the Jagger's jury felt that there was no power on earth to combat the thing that had killed Sid. Sheriff Standish felt the same way. And in desperation, he summoned the doctor to his office. The thing I want to speak about, Potter, is this. You checked on Jagger, didn't you? Yes, I did, sir. Found he was dead. Hello, Kim. I've been doctor around here for good many years. When I say a man's dead, is it likely I'd be wrong? Anyhow, dead or alive, wasn't he buried? That's what was told me. Even if he wasn't dead, he would be by the time night came. No argument about that. You know what I think? What? It wasn't Jagger at all. Not Jagger that was hanged?  That's wrong. It was Jagger. There's all kinds of proof of that. I tell you, Potter, Jagger is alive. It can't be. But he is. He's got to be. Is there any track outside the cell window? No, no track at all. The ground wouldn't take a track. How about tracks near the grave? Well, there too. The ground's hard-packed from like a rain. Hey, might of yard. Might of yard. Can't figure it out at all. You're sure he was dead, though? I am. Ever hear of a man coming back to life? Never in all my experience. Ever read of a case like that? Nothing. It was never proved. That's what I wanted to ask you. Sure. You sent for me? Oh, yes. Come in, Belden. Close the door. Anything new on Sid's murder? Nope. How are you, Doc? You just can be expected, Belden. Belden, I sent for you to speak about the hanging of Dan Jagger. You fixed the rope and took charge of that. That's right. You're sure there wasn't no slip-up? I'm sure of it. Oh, you ought to know, hadn't I? I reckon you ought to. Is that all you wanted of me? Well, no, Tato.  Another? I didn't know about that. Who's to hang? Oh, it ain't nothing much. Only that I'm working on the lead to get Jagger again. You want me to round up some of that? Yeah, I'll file one sum of the boys to help me trailing. But you said that... I said there wasn't tracks to be seen. Yes, that's what you said. There's other ways to trail besides tracks. There's a redskin in town that'll help me. Redskin? Uh-huh. Curious critter, too. Where'd he come from? Who is he? Stranger to both of you. But I happen to know about him. He'll start out with me right after dark. I'll follow him with some men, and I've got a hunch he can do more in bloodhounds. Eh, he wouldn't take stock in a redskin's word. Don't do no harm to follow him. He'll either lead us to something or to nothing. If the first is the case, well and good. And if it ain't, we ain't lost nothing by trying him out. How can a redskin follow a trail any better than one of us? Sometimes these redskins have a sort of uncanny knack of doing things. Anyhow, we're going to see what he can show us. When do you stare? Tonight. After dark? Yep, after dark. Hello, Sheriff. Ooh, howdy, boys. You want him to see us? Come on, come right in. I'll talk to you all at once. What sort of a meeting is this? These are the boys that served on the hanging jury. Why don't they have a talk with them? We're all sure enough scared, Sheriff, that the way that J.G. kept his threat, it'll likely be us he'll come to get next. Or our families. Find yourself someplace to set, boys. That's all I wanted of you, Doc. Well, I'll be going then. Bye. Bye, Belden. That is, uh... I'll let you know if there's anything else. Well, all right. Goodbye. Now, boys, I figured that all of you men that served on the jury would be a little fidgety. Yeah, don't tell half of it, Sheriff. It likely would be plum uneasy at home tonight. Yep. That's why I thought you'd sooner be where I'm going. Where? Following a trail. Whose trail? Why, the killer's, of course. Jagger? Maybe Jagger, maybe not. At any rate, I got a notion that when we start out from the window that Sid got killed at, we'll start on a trail that'll end with another hanging. Are you all with me? Doc! All set now, Lieutenant? That's right. What about your friend with a mask? Ready to. I don't know about this scheme of yours and his, but there ain't nothing I can think of that sounds better. Who colors over there? Those men are the men that made up the jury. Oh. I can trust every one of them. They didn't have any doubt on that score. I'm good. How about Potter and Belden? Did you follow them after I talked to them this morning? Uh-huh. I'll follow them. Did they go anywhere? Talked to anyone? Then talk to a three-puller. Not leave town. All right, then. We may as well get started. Hey, gents! Down door's ready to start out. He'll have to go on foot and slow. That'll make it easier to follow them. That's right. Now, if we find the man that killed Sid, we won't waste no time at all. We'll hang him right at sunrise. Good. Go ahead, Tonneau. Start training. Tonneau took the lead. The men who followed him were unable to see the clues that showed him the trail. How's he know where to go? If he leads to anything, I'll take my hat off to him. Better keep quiet. That's right. Save the talk. Keep one hand on your gun. You'll never come down. Tonneau let the man away from the town and toward a hill. He crossed a small rise, then headed for Neroio. Remember, boys, don't shoot unless I give the word. All right, sir. It seems like we're getting close now. The engine's holding his hand up. Wants us to stop. Well, Tonneau? Hell yeah. Just a head and a brush. He is, huh? All right, mister. Come out with your hands higher. We'll come in to get you. That shot was just a warning. Hold the fire. Someone's eyes. I'm coming out.  By Juniper the Red Skin, done it. Me, take horse, take gun. I don't know how you located me, Cheryl. And that Indian followed my trail. He's good. He followed it, stranger. And we are taking you in. You killed Sid. Don't deny it. You done it. Ain't that the case? How could I have made you think it was Dan Sager if I'd been the murderer? Hey, you see? He knows all about it. That proves his guilt. Let him take more than you'll say, so to prove anything. We ain't figuring on wasting time with you. Oh, no one come back from the dead after all, huh? It wasn't Dan Sager that done the knife, huh? You all seem to have things pretty well subtle in your mind. There's no use for me to deny anything. Not a bit of use. Not a bit of use. He's about to go with you. What's your guess? Just mount up and don't make it ice for it. Ride slow toward town. Very well. You can confess, Dan Ratch, and help us so you can hang your son up. Confess to what? To what do you think? To the murderous hit, of course. I'll hang first. Well, that boy should soon have hanged and confessed. By thunder we'll sure as blaze as a comedy. Daybreak found the men on the jury and a number of the townspeople gathered at the hanging tree. Potto appeared nervous in contrast to his usual calm. The sheriff, too, was tense and anxious. The captured man, sitting on the powerful white horse, was silent and allowed himself to be led by Belden and several others to a place beneath the noose. If anyone thought it odd that the sheriff would be agreeable to a hanging without a trial, no comment was made. All right, mister. I'll fix the noose now. Go ahead.  Nothing. Belden, the same way you fixed Jagger. Get it? What about Doc?  The boys for the burial? All set. What's holding it up? Just have a little trouble with the noose, that's all. Let the hanging proceed. All right. Silver leaped ahead. The rope jerk taut, and the lean, strong body of the Lone Ranger dropped and swung in the gray light of dawn. Then he was cut down, and Doc Potter moved close. Hurry it up, Doc. Make your examination. Is he done first? A little more with it. That'll make me sleep a heap better. I'm glad there wasn't no truth to the fact that Jagger come back from the dead. Me, too. Gentlemen, well, my capacity is cornered. I officially pronounce this man dead. Step up, boys, and take away the remains. There will be none. Take away the remains. The doctor's lying. I'm no more dead than any of you. All set, boys. Get him covered. You wanted the cattle gang. Well, capture the deputy Belden. He vicks the rope around my chest beneath my arms instead of around my neck. I haven't doubled crosses. Cover him, boys. Capture the doctor. Who lied when he said that I was dead. He's going, look who this ain't done. Come on, Doc. We got your flat footed. Capture the man who made up the burial committee, and it would have buried an empty coffin, the same as they did in Jagger's case. We got you. And the first that makes a move for guns gets shot. We got you all covered. Now I'll do the talking. That there stranger is the lone ranger. He ain't masked, but his face is covered with a disguise. He figured out how Jagger was up and about and tried it out. If Belden hadn't thought he was one of the gang he'd have put the rope around him right, then we would have had inner fear. But Belden fell for the trick, sold the dock. Wait, let me talk. If I had to do it, I didn't have no choice. There'll be some hangings of the cattle thieves, but there'll also be some of you that'll get off easy. Them, the turned states' evidence. I will, I will. Now that you have the whole gang, I'll tell you all again. Jagger wouldn't let me live if I hadn't helped out. Wait, if Doc is going to Scrillard, I'll talk first. I don't hang to the hang. Crush the pack of them off to jail. We'll see who can talk the most. Main thing is to locate Jagger's hangout. I'll tell what he's hiding out here. Take him away, boys, while I sank the Rome Rangers. I'll silver away!


Hello everyone and welcome to the Circular Metabolism Podcast, the bi-weekly meeting where we have in-depth discussions with researchers, policymakers and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities. Or in other words, the resource use and pollution emissions and how to reduce them in a systemic, socially just and context-specific way. I'm your host Aristide from Metabolism of Cities and on today's episode we will discuss about some fundamental questions that are looking how capitalism and rationalism has altered our relationship with nature, which in turn is responsible for a number of our current environmental crisis. In other words, we'll look whether the duality between separating nature and society, which we always use as a given in my field when we account for flows, is actually one of the root causes for the situation we're in. So let's take a quick question whether the right way to qualify the epoch we're living in is capitalism instead of Anthropocene. And finally, we'll try to see together whether there is another sociological future that we would like to co-create or foresee. So for all these big topics I have Jason W. Moore. Jason is an environmental historian and historical geographer at Big Hampton University. He's a professor of sociology over there, and he's the author of Capitalism in the Web of Life, Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. He's also the editor of Anthropocene or Capitalism, Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism, and he also co-authored with Rash Patel another fantastic book. His books are trying to make the synthesis between the radical scholarship, well, red and green let's say, by looking at the long term perspective of capitalism, power and nature, and he also coordinates the word ecology research network. Just before we kick off the episode, I'd like to make a small request from you that are watching and listening. If you like this episode, please share it around with your friends, colleagues and family. I think a number of people are going to enjoy it, and it's the best way to support this small podcast that is quite niche, but I think a number of you will enjoy it. With all that being said, welcome Jason. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here, Steve. Great. So, of course, I think for you to arrive to analyze, to theorize and to develop such notions, there has been a small journey, I guess, between geography, history, sociology. How do we arrive into this topics of Capitalism, word ecology and such? Well, so there are two questions here. One is the question about the disciplines, and the other is the question about the capital policy and the capital of scene. So why don't we do the disciplines first and then you can interrupt me and push me in this direction and that direction. First, let's be clear that the disciplines are called disciplines because they discipline intellectuals. They control and contain and channel intellectuals and intellectual life into acceptable forms of scholarship. And so you mentioned my journey, which involves a PhD in geography. I'm really in the lineage of an urban, I don't know if I want to say urban centered, but urban influence historical geographical materialism. I'm in the lineage of David Harvey, Richard Walker. I work intellectually, I see myself as a co collaborator with people like Neil Brenner and the planetary urbanization thesis that takes urbanization as a class environmental spatial process, political process as a dialectical hole. And so that defies disciplinary boundaries. However, what we see in the established disciplines are something, it's a situation that resembles the parable of the blind men and the elephant. And one blind man finds a tree trunk another finds a wall and other finds a rope. And so what we see for instance in historical geographical materialism is coming out of geography is that it's not very historical. However, if you flip it on flip it on the other side, world history and environmental history and climate history in particular maintains considerable distance from historical geographical materialism of any kind, the critique of capitalism. And we can do that across the different disciplines some understand class better than others sociology in general better than geography. And this is not a call my own journey intellectual journey suggests not the need for multi disciplinarity, which is a problem which is a huge problem, it essentially reinforces the problem of the disciplines, but rather an argument for transcending the disciplinary boundaries. I mean that's a political problem, not just an intellectual problem, universities love to talk about going beyond disciplines, none of them mean it. Funding agencies love to talk about interdisciplinary, none of them mean it. And there we have to look at this as not just a problem of oh well some scholars identify as geographers or sociologists or urbanists or agrarian study scholars. And that's a symptom of the of the deeper problem the deeper problem goes to something that you telegraphed in your opening remarks, which are nature versus society, and the larger structures of knowledge in the modern world system, which is a capitalist world ecology, I'll talk about that in a moment, but essentially the structures of knowledge. Most obviously the two cultures of the human and natural sciences but we can break those down into their constitutive moments, most notably this nature society boundary is not just a structure of knowledge. It is a strategy of power. And so until intellectuals within universities, which are in fact knowledge factories. And we should, we should emphasize that universities are corporations they don't they're not beholden to the stock market, but in many cases they may as well be. And they don't say that to themselves that's the interesting duality right now yeah well they have to be because part of what knowledge factories do is not just produce appropriately skilled and appropriately obedient students, but also they socialize with intellectuals so that they behave in acceptable ways. And it's, you know, this is not the Agora of ideas. This is a machine and like any factory like situation there are multiple opportunities for struggle, but the universities have to say this because they have to socialize the intellect workers within the Academy to behave in ways and to not raise uncomfortable questions and I don't mean uncomfortable like everybody's supposed to be a vegan. I mean uncomfortable in terms of. Well, how does savings and investment work in capitalist civilization and doesn't need to be fundamentally reimagined in a democratic way. So, in some this my own journey through the disciplines has taught me that the disciplines are part of the problem and I mean no disrespect to people who for quite reasonable, biographical and social factors, identify and they say well I'm an urbanist I'm a geographer.  And, and so we've all we've all been in rooms and conferences where people say, well, as an economist, as a political scientist from this point of view yeah. Right and that's, that's the moment where you hear somebody has run out of ideas and they are arguing from the point of view of authority. Now I might say as a world historian this is what we've learned, but I would not make that as a special claim to expertise only a particular vantage point, one of many vantage points that is compatible with many other vantage points that we'll see. So in some we need to go beyond the safe and predictable and acceptable critique of epistemologies and disciplines to understand the disciplines are, in fact, historically in quite palpable ways, ideological structures and mechanisms to manufacture consent and yes there are dissidents and there there is a counter tendency. So the knowledge and the structures of power and the structures of capital are all dialectically joined to each other. Yeah we're starting strong good, because, well, I have always this challenge as well to define myself or in which conference do you go or how do you, you know you always feel left out somehow or you, you are the, the Venn diagram of many things and somehow you try to, to be the fitting piece of all of that and it's, well wonderful because you learn from everything, but at the same time exhausting because you, you feel uncomfortable all the time. And I think therefore, okay if we start discussing eventually for what one central topic, which would be capitalism, for instance, how do we, how do we frame capitalism because you know a number of our discussion or a number of the questions and that's what we're going to say is going to be around capitalism I think we need to start from the basis in order to, to build upon it. So, is it, it's not a disciplinary then point of view what what do we do with this right what are the theoretical tools, you are looking this from the long durée, such as, I guess brought up or people like that or from the word systems point of view how do we understand this this economic system is it an economic system what is it. Well, it's a system of class power that includes an economic logic but it's not reducible to it so to regard capitalism as an economic system is fundamentally a bourgeois procedure this has been recognized for explicitly for the whole 20th century this was the great Hungarian Marxist your gay, Lukacs you said, you know the primacy of economic motives is not what distinguishes Marxism, what distinguishes historical materialism is the point of view of totality. Now when we say this, let me make clear the point of view of totality does not say we include everything. And we, we try to do everything. Now as intellectuals. I'm sure you and many of our other the listeners will relate to the curiosity that is licensed by dialectics that we want to understand how everything is connected to everything else. The point of view of totality is an intellectual procedure. And this is very important because there are many forms of post structuralism that essentially are carrying water for neoliberalism that say Marxism is irreducibly totalizing and universalizing. This is especially the line of critique that comes out of the decolonial thought associated with people like Arturo Escobar and Walter Magnolo, not, not Kehanno.  Anyway, we want to be clear that looking at totalities is a historical geographical procedure. It's not a universalist claim. It's dialectical universalism, if you will, as opposed to the bourgeois universalism of capitalist ruling ideas from the very beginning. Now I use that term ruling ideas because for me the lineage is to Marx and Engels and the foundational statements of historical materialism. I do so not out of a sense of historical, of theoretical orthodoxy whatever that means we should go we should all go back to the German ideology. And we should see what Just one question with historical materialism. What do you have in mind when you, when you use this. What I have in mind is the lineage that goes back to the to the German ideology, in fact, and here we have several key ideas, not just the materialist conception of class society. That's one of them. And that's how Marx and Engels in the German ideology begin. They begin with what they call natural conditions and, and their subsequent modification in the course of the development of class society. In other words, this is an argument for class society in the web of life class society, and we know this. This is an urbanization podcast. We know this because the origins of class and cities, go hand in hand in, let us say, the localithic copper age and early bronze age human history, we can go down the rabbit hole in this but essentially as Peter Taylor and others have rightly elaborated child's famous thesis. Class formation and class structure really achieves its mature form in early cities. Now what counts as a city and what doesn't that's that's a more technical discussion, but these two moments go together. How do they reproduce themselves. Well, Neil Brenner and his colleagues give us operational landscapes, and that's basically right. Scott James Scott calls them state landscaping and as an anarchist he wants to say it's more or less all state driven, but the state is an instrument of power for the ruling class. If there are contradictions of course in that and there's class struggle of course in that process. Nevertheless, what Marx and Ingalls give us is an account of class society in the web of life it's a materialist critique, it's a materialist critique that takes ideology seriously. So they argue something quite robust, which is that every ruling class must generate, essentially, another auxiliary class to produce ideas ruling ideas for them. They are what are variously called intellect workers. Today they're sometimes referred to as the professional managerial class. They certainly include professors alongside policymakers and some some journalists, etc. So that a historical geographical materialism takes class society in the web of life seriously and understands the classes do not rule by materialist practices alone except in so far as we regard again with Marx that ideas themselves are material forces. And so I don't say this out of any orthodoxy but to clear out the confusion that a vulgar materialism represents historical materialism which it clearly does not in which Marx and Ingalls from the very beginning I mean remember they're writing the German ideology in their books and they carry this line of thought all the way through and oh by the way they are also insisting from the very beginning, not on society in nature, but on the relations of humans to the rest of nature. What is human labor they ask the human labor is and I quote from the gründris a specifically harnessed natural force. So if we want to understand the long jury of urbanization which is also the long jury of class society and state formation. Then we need to take seriously what I've called the environmental environment making dynamic of these processes and I'll pause here in just a moment but let me go close this loop. The environment making means that environments are both producers and products of class society over the long jury. And that environment making is a dialectic if you will, that that Marx basically summarizes in the most one of the most extraordinary passages in capital. It's the first page of the chapter on the labor process where he makes very clear. There's a metabolism. That is a metabolism of class power. Right that's he's beginning this this chapter in order to talk about class struggle. It's, it's on the labor process. And so metabolism is a class struggle in which internal nature or humans transform environments the environments transform humans and the relationship itself which is a metabolic relationship is transformed. If we take that seriously, which most Marxist don't. But if we take it seriously, then we can say this about however you want to use whatever metacatocore you want I would civilization class society I would see those as more or less interchangeable that civilizations produce environments through various labor processes, and the environments are transforming those civilizations in part through those labor centered transformations, but also in part through climatological shifts that are the result of natural forcing and essentially random events like volcanic activities. And we don't want to as humanists, they don't want to make too much of volcanism, but in fact volcanic eruptions have fundamentally shaped the course of human history. And I say this because there are many critics who say oh well more is just a social constructionist he's an idealist he doesn't really care about the web of life. I see them writing about the history of volcanism in the history of class society or the history of capitalism. So, let's be aware that saying there's an environment making dynamic doesn't mean that there aren't essentially elements of natural forcing including so fluctuations and solar energy reaching the earth, orbital variations the pre session and recession and the earth wobble. In other words matters quite a bit all of these factors are hugely significant. And, of course, regardless of whether there's a class society or peasant communism, or something entirely different. Volcanoes will erupt the solar, there will be solar minima and maximum. And that's really, that's really important to keep in mind to that essentially webs of life are uncontrollable but the ways in which class societies have sought to control environments. That implies a dialectic of class urbanization politics and environmental change across the very long delay. So that's the insight for me that informs capitalism. And just one note that we can follow up on is that it's become acceptable to talk about capitalism as a system. But, and it's a very important but we go back to the knowledge factory which is established essentially an intellectual no fly zone around capitalism as a class society. And a refusal and a systematic discouragement of intellectuals from investigating say climate change as fundamentally a class project as a capital ogenic that is made by capital historical process. We can't talk about class. And that's really, really dangerous in the present moment of climate crisis. So, I'm trying to, I'm going to take the excuse of the audience to clarify some points. Excellent. There's a lot there. There is capitalism is some form of a class society that has specific rules be it on on labor on nature and other elements and capitalism capitalist civilization invents nature. Now what does that mean more as being a social constructionist. No, in fact, and this is this is where eco socialists go terribly terribly terribly wrong, because they don't know about history and as near as I can tell there's very little interest in world history. There is a long and fairly uncontroversial history of ideas which makes clear, for instance, that Western civilization and indeed the notion of civilization is not invented until fairly late western civilization doesn't remember the discourse and capitalism's motive thought until the 18th century civilization enters into Western European languages in the century between 1550 and 1700, along with what other words, nature, society. Savage gets the meaning gets re signified savage in the Middle Ages meant something fierce and noble. And there's an oscillation sometimes that's used, but by and large, the way that early capitalist conquerors saw the world. Certainly the new world was in terms of civilization and savagery, which is what today we call civilization in nature. Now some people say do we really need to know this intellectual and philosophical history in order to make sense of climate justice politics. And the answer is an emphatic. Yes, and let me just give you the shortest snippet of this argument that when john lock writes the Constitution for the Carolinas at the end of the 17th century, which by the way is in the midst of the climate crisis until now the capitalism face the worst of the long of the, the little ice age, but he writes this Constitution that amongst other things forbids English settlers from entering into contracts with indigenous peoples. Why, well we know this sort of but we don't appreciate its significance because indigenous peoples lived in a state of nature. They were savage. What was the significance of that the practical significance of that. Well, savage people could not improve improve with an uppercase I improve the land in a capitalist fashion. Or he didn't say capitalist but improve it to ensure productivity and economic growth and all the rest I'm paraphrasing. And so therefore settlers historical mission was to improve the land something that the savage indigenous peoples who lived in a state of nature could not do. So, are we to say the property bourgeois property, and the whole geocultural apparatus of climate apartheid climate patriarchy, and the climate class divide organized around bourgeois property, and its imperial conditions of protecting and defending are beside the point. Of course not nobody would say that, but this is an example of how bourgeois thought in nature society dualism has essentially short circuited the historical imagination of the left today, and the many scholars who regard themselves as critical and say well, I read a fine piece in some ways but a very destructive piece and others in in the conversation the website the conversation where the fellow said well the Anthropocene is problematic, but at least it raises awareness. Well, the term or what, or the it raises awareness of the climate crisis this is the same thing that people have been saying, since the first Earth Day, the first UN conference in Stockholm and 72. Well it raises awareness well yes indeed it raises awareness in the same way that Maltes helped readjustify class divisions in late 18th century England. It completely evacuates the central questions of power, class, capital and empire in the modern world, the Anthropocene, and I don't mean the geologists we can get into the nitty gritty of golden spikes and that's an interesting discussion.  So that's very crucial the history and the politics have to be regarded as much more intimately connected. And I think that connects with your first question about the disciplines and my point about the violence of the discipline which is related to practical violence as well. When you distinguish history with word history. Could you explain what it entails. Well I invoke world history as a point of emphasis. So history as a discipline does contain some world historians. I know I'm very good friends with some of them they're brilliant they're intrepid, but in the main world history is a teaching and not research field within the discipline in fact the discipline active the discipline now sort of encourages things like transnational history and this and that, but world history speaks to the world historical imagination that and I'm sorry to sound like an old guard Marxist here, but the Marx and Ingalls point out, especially in relation to the modern world, which is that the dynamic of capitalism renders every day life increasingly a world historical event. We all know this and recognize this is some level that the clothes we wear the computers we use the stows we cook upon. These are all manufactured elsewhere in the world, by and large or manufactured through the global assembly line. That's that's important but it's also important when we recognize that, as I like to say for instance 1492 never ended. And in rich countries with no experience of imperialism, they always look at me quizzically I lived in Sweden for many years it was a wonderful experience and they couldn't wrap their minds around it. I can also say this in other ways we can say that 1648 concluding the 30 years war never ended we can go through this in many different ways. But the world historical imagination defies the binary of past and present nits them together I think that's Wallerstein's contribution the work of Emmanuel Wallerstein. Everyone uses a phrase like world systems like it says something. People forget that Wallerstein was always an anti systemic thinker. They're always a dialectical thinker right then they mix them up with systems theory, and the systems theory of limits to growth of J Forester that kind of says you probably know him in urbanization through urban dynamics, which is one of my students, Maria Radovanovich points out comes directly out of the urban unrest in the United States in the late 1960s, right so systems thinking is a managerial philosophy, and was directed towards managing problems on the battlefield in the factories in the cities, and on a planetary basis. But anyway, what we want to do is start to link together past and present and to understand, not only did 1492 never ended, but we also need to get rid of this anthropocene epic garbage, even in a geological term, and start to talk about what, well, William Ruderman and Simon Lewis Mark Maslin and others are saying is an anthropocene event that the Holocene already implied and necessitated and recognized human action. And that was, it was, that was already in play 150 years ago, right so very old wine in a somewhat new bottle, and not even that new about but but there's a there's a more interesting point, which is that the origins of urbanization state formation in society. Also, and this is what Ruderman points out in the so called ruderman or early anthropogenic hypothesis point out that essentially what we're seeing is that class society stabilizes the Holocene and prevents a reversion to an ice age in the in the along the same timeframe as previous interglacial periods between glacial maximums. That is so class society creates the conditions. This is not Ruderman doesn't say class society he's a very much a multi in in this sense, focusing on population dynamics but if you look at the history you can see the class societies drive population dynamics class societies are very pro natalist in all sorts of ways. And in the historical critique of population dynamics by and large. So we don't know this, but I'm saying it here that the Holocene this interglacial period we are living in is made possible by class society, which essentially arrest the decline in car and atmospheric carbon dioxide gun levels met methane as well. And then brings them back up to levels around 270 260 parts per million and creates this remarkably stable climate over the whole Holocene. Now, are there anthropocene events throughout yes, but let's really start to focus on the ideological consequences. Not just to the popular version of the anthropocene but also the geological version and those scientists they always take refuge in the authority and expertise of science, but they're not afraid to violate the boundaries and to elaborate and wax on at length about human history. And, and so there's a real arrogance there that's coming by a lack as arrogance often is a lack of, of reflexivity and reflectivity. So, here, these are ways of beginning to see how the point of view of totality as they invoked from historical materialism and Lukacs and Marx and everyone else is a way to begin to see what is not there in the dominant environmental conceptions of our era, the Holocene the Anthropocene the danger of climate. The arguments that, for instance, is a journal peasant studies editors recently said human made climate change poses an existential threat, which is about as multi in a statement as you can get it says, you know, human made no it's not human made. It's class made it's driven by capitalism, the climate crisis, and the, the existential threat is not by from climate change it's from the class project of the imperial bourgeoisie over the past 500 years. And that's situated within the longer arc of the Holocene from let us say, more or less somewhere around 6000 BCE. And so we want to really start to test all of these propositions, but we can't test these propositions, because the universities are set up to foreclose the, the opportunities to do so unless you want to go off and go in the wilderness which is, I think what a lot of us need to do and then we need to build solidarity. So we can, you know, maybe surround the cities from the countryside, as Lin Piao used to say. It's a great reference for an urbanization podcast. Yeah, he outneeds to be referenced surround the cities. It's funny. Yeah, how indeed. Yeah, this whole. Well, this whole layers and how much we need to know before we speak as well and you know it kind of, you know, you, how humble you need to be before saying anything out. It seems I mean you, you went from 6000 BCE to, you know, the Renaissance and then back and forth and all that and I think that there are elements here and there and and hints here and there that are interesting but the thing is how do you link them. It's, you know, there is of course this, this idea that you might have your own bias and therefore you link them as such, you know, at posteriori rather than on the other way around so are for serious something like that. I, I love this way of being able to look at hints over time and try to make sense and also putting things into relationship but how do you know when you read them how when you look at them, especially as you say that history this discipline is is always also taught by the winners and all that so there's so many things that we don't know so how do you go about in this, you know, immense wealth of knowledge and therefore somehow forming a story or, or something to say. Well, this is where historical materialism is so valuable remember what Marx says and in the thesis on fewer bike the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it. Now that does not mean we don't need philosophy. It means that we need philosophy to change the world and in order to change the world, we need to have a historical materialist conception so the crucible of knowledge in this conception is praxis. And there's no, you know, bedrock pro crusty and bed of truth that we can get to have only we can remove our biases. And bias only makes sense in relation this is not what you're saying at all of course but bias only makes sense in relation to a positivist objectivist bourgeois notion of truth. So, we have tools to do this one is history. And in a situation like this, it's very difficult to unpack and test very large conceptual propositions against the nitty gritty of historical geographical experience. I think that podcasts are less suitable for that and written texts are more, and I've tried to the best of my ability to do that. And so you kindly mentioned my capitalism and the web of life, which in my view is unusual, and I think has elicited both appreciation and controversy, because it's hard to understand it's hard to locate the genre of the book, and the genre of the because engages political theory engages philosophical anthropology very very seriously philosophies of nature very seriously, and is also a theoretical book about capital accumulation and is also a world history. So there is not a paragraph of conceptual theoretical or philosophical argument in that book that is not almost immediately followed with a historical illustration. Now the historical illustrations do not prove or disprove the point. What did they do, they illuminate the plausibility of the line of thought, so that we can hope that's what arguments for new paradigms do. Now whether this is successful or not that's another question but but how do we dialectically weave together these genres so that we explode the genres of a given field like an urbanization this is why Neil Brenner and his colleagues have elicited so much attack because they are saying that it's not that methodological city ism is not the way to go in fact there is a wider geography of urbanization that has to be taken very seriously so and they're illuminating the plausibility of that paradigm shift, which I see is absolutely not just cognitive but contributory to and complimentary to the world ecology conversation. So in that light. First of all praxis, it's both scholarly praxis like do you have conceptual models that undergo qualitative transformation through the course of a study.  And this is actually a problem with some of the most prominent mischaracterizations of my work I have the sense that they read the first 30 pages. And I did a PDF, a keyword search for everything else and cherry pick their, their phrases but if you look, for instance, how I begin the web of life is with a discussion of how do we understand, not humans as part of nature. Everybody agrees on that that's not, that's not the argument, but human collectivities human organizations families farms financial systems. And that is, are civilizations as producing changes in the web of life but also products of those changes in the web of life. How do we conceptualize that double internality that is webs of life are inside human organization, and human organization is inside the webs of life that doesn't deny the autonomy of those wider webs of life as I mentioned with my example of the Earth's orbital variations, or volcanic eruptions, both hugely important by the way, in human history, in any event. So, so what, what I do there is to establish a, what Marx calls a guiding thread. And then where I end is by making an argument about capitalism's relationship to the climate crisis that is, at least on the surface, absolutely identical to those of rival rival eco socialist interpreters, which is that the climate crisis is a fundamental and insuperable barrier to the reproduction of capitalism, as we've known it. Now, what I say again and again and again is that what World Ecology helps us see is not the what the what has already been I think well documented yes is a real climate crisis yes it involves greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere but also what I've called the Trinity, the climate class divide climate patriarchy climate apartheid, something they don't say, but I do because it's so fundamental we have to put these two moments together, but also that we have to understand the specific mechanics of how capitalism has fixed its own climate and other environmentally related crises over the long jury to produce insuperable limits that then lead in several possible directions, one of which is a kind of techno scientific World Economic Forum, great reset vision of the world. Another is some ill defined still Chinese Belt and Road strategy another is includes a family of popular alternatives alternatives democratic alternatives, much of which I think are very starry eyed because they don't deal with history. But essentially, that's an example of the power of dialectics and getting to the point that you just asked about which is how do we know this is useful. Well, does your conceptual and methodological and historical apparatus, lead you to surprising and unexpected conclusions at the end of a particular phase of your study. The answer is yes, then that's that's as good a test of scholarly practices in and of course they're wider political issues we can talk about but in terms of scholarly praxis I think I think bourgeois thought teaches us to be relentlessly. You just say word humble and I think every intellectual who is deeply curious is humble. I think that in the bourgeois Academy. The dynamics of labor or what I call academic alienated labor, and they induce encourage and enable forms of anxiety and insecurity that go beyond normal self doubt, and they do it in a lot of different mechanisms, not least through this absolutely challenging exercise of expertise, right you have the senior professors who say well I know this, and they're going to, they're going to force people to agree with them or drive them away.  I want to give them credit people like Giovanni Righi and Richard Walker and David Harvey and Edmund Burke the third and many others that, of course there are dissidents in the Academy but we also have to look when we look at that question of truth and humility.  So every statement you make, you feel like you have to have 16 different references, and you need to say well not this but this and, and I think that that's absolutely corrosive. And so far as to say that even some supposedly progressive academics in saying well we don't need this masculine voice as reinforce that and fit in very readily with us yes masculinism is corrosive and part of the problem. No question about it. So today, that critique often means that we can't say anything big about anything big and they completely misread somebody like Donna Haraway, who was always saying big things. She's always being big statements about big processes as saying well, you know, the God trick and all this no I mean the point of the God trick is that's, that's the the mechanism of bourgeois thought and knowledge, and which is concrete, which is very concretized very early on in the cartographic and shipbuilding revolutions of early capitalism. So, we need to weave these moments together so that we're not just always chasing our tail like I'm not coming on here to say, look, I've discovered this truth. See they are edged onto stone tablets, except the truth no as I say, the first line of the capitalism of the world of life is this is a conversation. We have more conversations and less of like let's throw my theory against your theory exercises. I think there was something important about models as well that you mentioned now and I want to eventually give two clarifications for people who are listening or watching. The first bourgeois I guess is this class between either the proletariat or the people who work with their hands, and while there's no more aristocracy I guess so the in between is the bourgeois class how do you define the bourgeois. All right, so in the simplest possible terms, we have a capitalist class and a working class. Now are there intermediate classes yes absolutely although there's a lot of confusion about that. But what I want to then say immediately is that from a dialectical historical geographical perspective. These are tendencies. So the tendency of capitalism is towards a world of the owners of capital and the property less who must work for capital capitalism will never get to that point. For a crucial reason I discussed in world ecology in our book seven sheet things but also in capitalism and the web of life. Capitalism relies on unpaid work, the unpaid work of humans what I call the Femmiteria and the unpaid work of webs of life as a whole, what I call, following Stephen call us the bioteria. And so there is a dialectical process of proletariat, Femmiteria bioteria, those are not separate categories. People always say oh more is just equating the work of a forest with the work of the house life with the work of the factory labor. No, these are differentiated moments of a singular unity that form and reform across long historical periods. Which you also call externalities and visibilities right these. So ideologically right there's exactly there's ideologically and ecological economics for for now, 80 years since William cap in 1951 certainly and probably earlier have talked about how capitalism is a system of unpaid cost. That's absolutely right. What we in world ecology take that one step further, we say that capitalism is a system of unpaid work that forever and this is very important if we want to understand the climate crisis is what I call the disproportionality thesis let me explain that for every unit of work that is done within the cash economy. So the factory worker the office worker etc. It requires a disproportionately larger inflow of unpaid work and of the unpaid work of humans and the rest of nature. That's very, very significant because that's not only how capitalism is in a crisis today and you can see it in all sorts of economic data productivity data. But there's also how capitalism has historically resolved its crises now, who are the agents of resolving those crises are they are the capitalist classes in the imperialist countries, whether they do they build empires. We've heard a lot about settler colonialism colonialism, and most people discuss it as if it's somehow separate from capitalism, and especially as if it's somehow separate from class. That is to say the least extremely misleading imperialism colonialism is how the imperial bourgeoisie prefers to wage the class struggle. What is the ambition or the goal of those class struggles to secure cheap natures, which can, we can break down the limits what I call the four chiefs of labor including unpaid work. So think about the long history of slaving slavery, coerced labor all around the world, food, energy, raw materials are other combinations possible, perhaps, but we can say this for sure that no major accumulation crisis in the history of capitalism has been resolved without a substantial reduction in the cost of these four chiefs, which reflect not only the power of money, but also the power of empires to secure unpaid work. And that's really really fundamental when we think today about climate justice politics. Back to the bourgeois because sorry we did we manage to answer somehow because we said, you know, we have the two opposites of the spectrum, and where do they sit. So, okay, so, so think of the this is very crude but in the bourgeoisie is today's 1%. And the bourgeoisie emerges and in fact emerges tentatively unevenly like all social processes like urbanization right in the long 16th century that is essentially the two centuries after 1450. It was not the story of well a new bourgeoisie comes and displaces the old feudal aristocracy. Sometimes it does but in many other cases aristocrats morphed into the owners of capital, almost always and everyone agrees on this from Robert Brenner to Daniel Wallerstein, these dynamics of class formation, the formation of a class of owners of bourgeoisie was politically enabled. Right, so let's not imagine this as an economic story of ingenious and thrifty Englishman or well Englishman is the usual story and a very misleading story. And then they eventually accumulate enough capital and every and then there's a breakthrough to the industrial revolution. That's about as false and misleading a story as we can possibly get. And that means that we so we think we can think heuristically and I want to be clear heuristically have a class of owners, and then those who are compelled to work. Now the classic Marxist version is those who are severed from the land and that's if you read Marx on primitive accumulation. That's what you tend to think about. But there are in the colonial world in fact the story was often the opposite of politically enforcing a relationship to the land. So that labor could be sent out from those villages into the centers of commodity production. This is for instance the famous rundale system in Ireland, which was a labor reserve in sub Saharan Africa in the colonial era. This was a fundamental concern of anti colonial critics in the Andes in the late 16th and 17th centuries. The Spaniards undertook to reorganize the whole population into villages, so they could supply labor to the minds. So I say this to remind the listeners that for a dialectical Marxism, these statements are heuristic that is they are about processes and they are about helping us learn more about what actually happened. They are not formal definitions of reality. So you have a class of owners and then a class who are compelled to work. It's not cash nexus but often unpaid. And this is why dynamics of climate apartheid and climate patriarchy are so important that it is a configuration of paid and unpaid work that extends not just to humankind in the labor that humans perform for capital and for the accumulation of wealth as capital, but also to the biosphere as a whole. Hence, the plan there is a planetary proletariat working class a planetary proletariat of proletariat them a terry it bio terry it, and those moments each one depends on the other. And that's a very difficult intellectual shift, not because it's so complicated, but because everything in the modern world teaches us to think in a completely different way. So if someone is looking through the different concepts and words we we've used so far, capital comes in, nature comes in, class comes in, and Marx comes in. Marx is kind of the cornerstone of many colleagues as well and I'm wondering, did he really revolutionize something? Why is he such a pivotal moment and helps or enables so much of the radical thought is it just because of recognizing, you know, the the plus struggles and differentiating elements and all of that or or why is he such a, you know, an element on or a foundation upon we build to say other things, and perhaps a slight continuation of this question is as well you know the we're going to go to the closing question right after that. Eventually, yeah, eventually you might want to already start and Marx helps us with that as well. Yeah, correct. Yeah. So, Marx and Ingalls come on to the scene, essentially they're the right people at the right time. Yeah, right the historical circumstances have ripened. So let's just remember what's happening in the 1840s and 50s in continental Europe. This is the moment at which large scale industry has begun to employ large numbers of workers across Western Europe there's also the impact of the Napoleonic Wars and the imposition of the cross central Western Europe at this time, and the growth of well a bourgeoisie that we were just talking about the owners of capital, which all promotes a level of questioning of a level of political possibility of course encapsulated in the 1848 institutions, and the communist manifesto is one key expression. So it's not simply this sort of abstract great man theory or great man theory of knowledge they come on to the scene at a particular moment, at which they are able to take the, both the sensibilities of 18th century, and also Hegel's dialectics, and really begin to see because it's unfolding right before their eyes it's like living in Shenzhen over the past 30 years, you could not escape the, the spread of capitalist revolution and the revolutionizing not just the industry but of cities, and with cities of course, the transportation networks, etc, etc. So, so they were in the right place at the right time to begin to articulate a method. For me, why, why are Marx and Engels so useful because of what I just said that word method so not method in the way that we get taught in PhD studies, much of which I find to be not very useful. But they are technical facilities like GIS or or regressions and, and, and those are important and necessary. But they are technical facilities they're not method in the way to positivism as a method or historical materialism as a method. And what's the virtue of historical materialism I think ultimately it comes to this question of praxis what Lukacs called the standpoint of the planetary proletariat, what I would call the standpoint of the planetary proletariat, but also the incessant relentless breaking down of dualisms in favor of dialectical connections. Now, let me try to clarify this point because often people think that a dualism is an innocent distinction. It's not dualisms in a modern sense are very much rooted in the history of imperialism and class formation during the rise of capitalism. Remember this example I give with lock. There's a very strict dualism between the indigenous so called savage and the civilizer, the improver. This is the language that they learned, and the way of seeing the world the English learned to see the world this way through their subordination of Ireland. So, the people make a lot about the world color line. I would just remind people yes there is indeed a world color line and to follow Cedric Robinson, it doesn't really always have to do with stick skin pigment. The Irish were just as black as anyone else as far as the English were concerned. So, these dualisms emerge at a practical time remember this connection that I made earlier about structures of knowledge, and structures of power capitalism is not just a mode of production. It's a mode of thought, and that thought essentially fragments the world into two I'm going to use a big sort of hyper intellectual word here to onto genetic units. They form internally to each other, I mean to not to each other but within each node so nature and society. These form, more or less independently within each other. And then they go and interact in the model of billiard balls. It's not just limited to nature and society, the, the one of the defining principles of dualism is the radical evacuation of properties from one to the other. It's about gender masculine feminine, that everything has stored this has been problematized lately and so it's a good example that everything that was masculine was different from that which was feminine. And so that's an example of the radical exclusionary and the radical evacuation of properties between each node. It's a philosophical discussion but it should be familiar if we go down the line of the West and the rest of white and not white of civilized and savage and on and on and on the great political philosopher Val Plumwood goes down this list that must have 20 items on it, and she calls it the logic of colonialism, she would do better to call it the logic of capitalism, and the logic of modern class power which of course involves colonialism. So we want to understand that that's a dualism. And I wonder if some of the critics maybe just don't understand either the philosophical procedure, or the actually existing history. And let's just pause for a moment when we think about working peoples and anti colonial struggles across the long durian one of the things that we hear again and again and again maybe readers are familiar with, for example, the phenomenon's wretched of the earth. And one of the, the, the expressions that we hear again and again and again from the very beginning of capitalism is that these human beings are being dehumanized. I want us just to pause for a moment where what that means. If they're being dehumanized they're actually being naturalized. And I'll get to the significance of that in a moment. This sounds like a philosophical point but I think that maybe I'm hoping that the political import of this is coming across. So that the struggle for liberation has been a struggle to be recognized as human. It's against the backdrop of being dehumanized that is suffering, the practical expression of the philosophical movement of being radical, having all the properties of human evacuated from from your group whether it's gender, or indigenous particular groups of Africans, etc. Sylvia Federici in her history of early capitalism says that women were transformed into and I quote the savages of Europe. That's a great example think of the taming of the shrew, that's the violence of dualism. And so I hear radical say no dualism is okay. I don't think that they are appreciating either the philosophical point or the historical realities of how bourgeois ideology and civilizing ideologies where they've called the civilizing project uses dualism as essentially a conceptual hammer of empire that justifies those expropriations, and slaving, and frankly mass murder. And so I'm not saying those, the people who use these words are therefore complicit in that that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that that dualism in a way short circuits are his are thirst for historical understanding. And the Academy tells us again and again, like find some concept you can use and then publish an article about that. Is that really what we need in the era of climate crisis. So in any event, this is the point that that Marxism I think is most useful, because it links the, the real development of the class struggle and a historical nitty gritty sense with ways of seeing the world and tries to inform each other. So this is different from other approaches that use dialectics or use relational thinking, but our very anti Marxist, for instance, Latour's work and we see where that's led with Latour back to, you know, defense of the European homeland. So, these are really crucial intellectual questions that might seem far removed from political struggles but they're not. So one of the dialectical elements that he uses Marx, and of course which is central to this podcast as well is the metaphor of metabolism that actually the word came just some years before he wrote the capital so it's it's kind of funny that he latched on, you know, new philosophical ideas, new terms as well and all of that. You mentioned in your book as well that he, it can be understood from different vantage points. His use of the term metabolism from the metabolic rift or from, you know, the social ecology and all that. Could you a bit elaborate about his use of the term and how do you use it. As Marx understood, he uses the term social metabolism and social metabolism. In Marx's sense does not mean the metabolism of nature and society. I think what it means is something very close to how he narrates the labor process, the first that first crucial passage or page of the labor process chapter in capital and forgive the kind of nitty gritty here, but it's been subject to so much that I want to try to make this as clear as I possibly can. And so what he's describing in capital with the labor process is this environment making dynamic where the labor transforms environments the environments transform the labor, and the labor process itself is at the center. The chapter is called the labor process. What's very interesting is that for for us in world ecology and for for some others as well. There is a metabolic process that is a labor process that includes to use these terms I'm playing around with proletariat and bioteria. There's a flow. There's a metabolic process that is a labor process and I'm not trying to collapse one to the other. One of the one of the great contributions of Marxism is that it moves through variation, not in spite of variation that always looks for differences in unity's and unity's and differences and sometimes it's more successful than others. So there's a metabolic process. The process is indeed a differentiated moment of the unity's of class society which include class, which include a mode of accumulation not necessarily capitalism all modes of production and modes of accumulation forms of state formation. Scott calls these skate state landscaping dynamics. There is a metabolism to them all so in other words, class societies don't have a metabolism they are metabolisms, and there are specific metabolic arrangements that are irreducible to political and class dynamics why are they irreducible because webs of life are qualitatively distinct and contain what I call the OECOS the pulse of life making that is itself deeply active. And so for me, I've always loved the concept of metabolism in a dialectical sense I've written about this quite a bit. There are many roads to enlightenment I'm convinced by my my argument for metabolism which is historical geographical involves human labor, as well as the work of extra human natures. I think that that's a very useful way but I think there are other fruitful approaches, and suffice it to say for those other approaches they have been not so charitable that for them academic sectarianism and perhaps Marxist sectarianism takes precedence. I think one of the first things I read when I was doing my master's thesis something about urban metabolism I, I read the history a bit about the term and through marine official Kowalski mentioning that it was remarks and for me that was, you know, a nice insight. I never went and read precisely what it meant neither understood it so for me for it wasn't the back burner for a very, very long time. That's sure he doubled with it but what precisely he meant. I think still to this day slightly roots me but I think I'm getting a bear grasp. You know, every day. And then in urban studies this has long been a major point going back to able woman and I'm sure. And, and so the, the, the distinctions the conversation is between more technical renderings of the term and social renderings of the concept. And they're related to right. Yeah, yeah exactly and then I mean it's such a prolific playground as well that is, it's very interesting it's also very, you know, when you were talking about making the environment. It's kind of this, this entity that is made by the day and I find it's really fascinating. Eventually, let's try to have a last question, but it might lead us to some interesting place. So let's imagine that's a true word the history.  Do you find or have you find any hints saying that we might be at the end of capitalism and something else is coming up. Or what should be, we should be looking at if there is something to be looked at when we talk about you know such a big container. I think a century or two or three from now, we will say either the capitalism by this point in 2022 was already done, or we'll say that it had at best a few more years left in it. Now, what do we mean by that. I think we need to be specific. So capitalism is above all a system and a strategy of accumulation premised on cheap natures cheap natures include labor food energy raw materials and we can throw other cheaps in there as Raj Patel and I have in our book. Every great wave of growth was preceded by a great accumulation crisis this goes all the way back to the great military and financial crises of the late 1550s. A long history of capitalist resolution of very concrete economic and political crises. So we should ask how did capitalist agencies empires classes, financial systems, etc resolve those crises well they went to frontiers with soldiers with guns priests with Bibles accountants with their ledgers planters with exotic sugar cane, and they, they succeeded in mobilizing a critical mass of cheap labor food energy and raw materials. Why is that so important for capitalism because capitalism is a system of accumulation. And if you reduce the cost of the basic inputs, all things being equal you increase the rate of profit. Now that's a very schematic way of putting it but it's very crucial to remember what's happening today there are no more frontiers of cheap nature. Now, what we're seeing with increasing force across the past 50 years and virtually every major intervention radical intervention in over capitalism over the past 40 years has said this, that there is a dynamic of politically enforced redistribution of wealth and power going on in the neoliberal era. And so this is bandana Shiva's bio piracy. This is Naomi Klein's shock doctrine. This is Harvey's accumulation by dispossession. This is sassans predatory accumulation. We want to really pause for a moment and ask about the ferocity, the scale the scope the speed of primitive accumulation in this era, which has failed to do what to essentially reestablish the conditions for a new long wave of accumulation. How do we know this. Well, I'm sure we could spend a whole day talking about this, but let me just give you two great indicators one is the non appearance of a new labor productivity revolution that was widely anticipated in the 1970s. It's a toffler future shock, Ernest Mandel in late capitalism, we're all seeing this a new wave of automation will unleash a new wave of labor productivity and establish the conditions for a new golden age of capitalism, one that never appeared. We did not in fact get the robot factory. Instead we got the global sweatshop. So, no robot factories lots of sweatshops, that's the model right to redistribute wealth and power to widen inequality, and to deal, and then to financialize again and again and again, and also dangerously and we see this today. Financialization over the past 50 years has really turned on militarization. I really graph how horrific that is and there's a strategic and umbilical cord if you will that's Harvey's term between finance and militarization that I think much of the academic left has just stuck their heads in the metaphorical sand about. It's quite horrific and it's it's related to of course America's driver unipolar hegemony, a project now in shambles. And so we want to make sense of these dynamics but in any event you have this long term labor productivity stall out. People like Jason Smith and Aaron Benov have recently written great books about this. There's also it's related to climate but not reducible to climate and this speaks directly to a more palpable sense of metabolism, a long term deceleration in agricultural growth. So, biotech revolutions failed to provide a the basis for a new agricultural revolution. There's the ongoing drive into Amazonia into the tropical rainforest of Borneo, other places like that but that's nothing like the opening of the agricultural frontiers and previous eras. There's no prospect of a revival, either of agricultural productivity growth, or of labor productivity growth. Of course with agriculture climate yield suppression is real has already been going on now for several decades. Let's see, I'm going to mess up Ortiz Boba and her colleagues in the journal Nature climate change published a piece last year, saying that fully eight years of agricultural productivity growth had been lost already because of climate change. And we know what's coming. So that implies that the essentially the core of capitalism is not just endless accumulation, but the way that it's secured what Gramsci calls the general interest is by building out the successive productivity of climate change. It can't do that right now so now we are back to an economic and political version of what Lenin glimpsed during World War One, the wars of redivision, and I hesitate to say so but we see those tendencies, breaking all around us. And if we're following events in Taiwan, and Ukraine and those are not the only flashpoints that should give us pause so we want to be able to understand the capitalism right now in my view is really a zombie civilization. It's walking, but it's dead. Alright, now that doesn't mean that the world in 50 years will look completely and totally different tributary civilizations those in which politics are in command. Imagine a scenario where the ruling classes of the world essentially take the logic of too big to fail. That logic of financial bailout to its logical extreme that basically puts explicitly political power in the driver's seat of capital accumulation and guarantees a certain limited capital accumulation model without the intensity of the production in Marx's sense. That would be a tributary solution, think about tribute tributary solution to the present crisis that's entirely possible. Any positive alternative. I think the positive alternatives are all around. It's again I think largely a question again of the parable of the blind men and the elephant that there are prefigurative politics all around that are extraordinarily powerful and useful. I've written about food sovereignty and la vie accomplicene I think they're extraordinary moments there I think they're prefigurative moments in some not all but some of the growth and Green New Deal discourses and politics I think there are very hopeful elements. I would say, even in China's challenge to American unipolar hegemony. I would say there are. We can look not just in the US but I'm here and it's very striking a resurgence of working class struggles for the first time since the early 1970s, it's at a very low level. So all of these, you know radicals love to sort of blow these up into oh here's some new great model. So there are lots of very powerful experiences. I would say and it's unpopular to say even the Venezuelan and Iranian challenges to American unipolar hegemony are instructive now none of these are models. But they are problematic for a neoliberal world order that says there's no alternative. I think a lot of the both activist and academic thinking on the left is a bit starry eyed about the prospects of transition and we tend to see an oscillation between hopelessness and I think over inflated optimism. And they're both there. We don't need either we don't need pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will we need. We need optimum intellectual optimism and as well as everything else. Again, we have to look at history and there's a real denial, especially in the left social democratic programs that have gained some traction and in Central Western Europe, and in North America. There's a real historical blind spot because none of them look at what happened at the most recent high tide of left wing social democracy in Western Europe in the first half of the 1970s they don't. They don't want to look at it, because it poses uncomfortable questions that require, I think, a really a kind of fearless, a fearless assessment of what was happening there I mean look at the one of my favorite examples is what what happens when the left wing. I want to say a left wing labor government labor government comes into power in Britain in 1974 on the heels of massive working class unrest and the most radical social program of the 20th century, and any major capitalist democracy. And there is. There's been a lot of literature on this but essentially what we see is the security apparatus, the United States, the International Monetary Fund, all colluding Kala and with each other, including the British army which does surprise unannounced to the Prime Minister's military exercises that closed down Heathrow three times after labor is elected four times in 1974 one just before the election. And remember this is in the era of the yende's coup. This is just after the horrific events in Indonesia in the mid 60s of third world fascism across the world. So, this is a very instructive moment now. You know the dirty tricks have not stopped the role of internal security states and their articulation with tech capital has not stopped the you know so we have. We have a very difficult situation when we want to be optimistic, and I am optimistic. I think that none of these will succeed, but I think also that we need to take very seriously. Essentially, the motto of imperialist powers against any challenger not just socialist but any nationalist project in the 20th century was essentially in order to save the village, it became necessary to destroy it. And that that we have to we have to be very serious about this and not go into well let's just have transition towns and more farmers markets and do the right kind of urban planning. It's very important. All of those are necessary. But what do we do when we want to rest control of the savings and investment mechanism, which everybody knows at some level will be necessary. If the cities are going to be rebuilt, and the infrastructures are going to be rebuilt in a democratic egalitarian and sustainable way. Is there any last elements you would like to to address something that we we've touched upon and we haven't developed something you wanted to to discuss. Well, I think that that last point really knits together the technical and the political. This is where urban metabolism urban political ecology approaches. I think planetary urbanization opens it up in powerful ways. There are other approaches as well. I'm very sympathetic to the work of Neil and Neil Brenner and his colleagues on this point that there are technical and political moments that have to be fused together in order to really reconstruct the world and that's what's going to be necessary. We all recognize this at some level we talked about sea level rise well it's not just cities that will have to be moved inland. It's also energy plants. It's infrastructures of every kind. And how are those going to be rebuilt. And so, during the Chinese Revolution. We talked about red and expert that we you know to rebuild a country that had been destroyed by a fascist empire. Expertise was needed to rebuild the country health system the urban system manufacturing everything, but it also had to be read it had to be oriented towards questions of justice and equality. And I would add to that that in the moment of climate crisis or revolutionary politics will have to be green, red and expert. Books or articles or films that you would like to recommend that might help us look at this green red and expert. You know that's that's I'm sure I'm doing injustice to, to somebody and blanking on on that who is who is fusing these questions. You know that's that's really important to pose. And I fear that I don't have a good answer and maybe we can. Maybe we can maybe someone will occur to us or maybe we can even find ways to build out those discussions, because I think it's of the utmost political importance to do you know not just you know and it's not just a question of nationalizing. You know, the, the contractors and the real estate developer it's not just a question of that. It's a question of, yes socializing them under democratic and worker control. Right, so what does, what does a workers democracy approach to urbanization in the era of climate crisis me. And that involves very difficult technical questions I have, I have so much admiration. I get so much inspiration from urban thinkers who are really wrestling with not just the broader politics and political economy but how in an engineering sense and built in a concrete built environment sense are people housed our community areas built our, our zones of production reproduction articulated or not. So these are really important technical questions that cannot be collapsed into each other we need again a unity and difference a difference in unity. And that's what's really hard to find in the Academy at this point what's happening. And this is something that I hope resonates with some of your listeners, what's happening is that instead of universities widening and opening up. The things that stress the interrelations, they are looking for more and more narrow technical specific specializations. And that's precisely what we don't need at this moment. That's not to say if you have a very technically oriented specialization that's unimportant, it is, it's very important. There has to be a balance, and the fact that there's not is a real problem. So I would say, let's, I mean my my really the capstone to this is look at the history of the Holocene, look at the history of capitalism, and look at how class and politics states and urban spaces are all forming and reforming each other, and producing webs of life but also being shaped by those webs of life. Thanks so much Jason I think it gives me new breath for for the podcast this last sentences about, you know what we need to do and what were the specificities and generalities and, and new pathways of interrogations for the future. It's a pleasure and an honor to talk with you it's really really been fun and lively. Well, thanks. Thanks a lot and thanks to everyone for listening and, you know, understanding all of these complex processes until the end. I'm sure that if you enjoyed this episode you probably will also enjoy. Well we mentioned them here so that the episode with Neil Brenner and Nicos Katsuki some planetary urbanization, and also on urban political ecology with Eric swing it out and Matthew again. So once again thanks to you all and see you in two weeks for another episode. Thank you. Cheers.


I'm Eleanor Thompson, and I'm one of the lecturers in the School of Science, and I am particularly interested in photosynthesis, and that work has resulted in us getting a grant, getting some research money to fund solar panels in agriculture in Kent. So the campus is in the Garden of England, and we have links with a big soft fruit farm here, who are helping us experiment with some agrivoltaics, and what that means is solar panels that are used in agriculture. So we did some research recently looking at the effect of transparent solar panels on plant growth, and now we have this big grant to put solar panels in an actual farm setting. So we have a partnership with a solar panel company and with a farm, and in particular we're looking at the effect of solar panels, transparent solar panels installed on glass houses or on poly tunnels where we're growing soft fruit. So what you can see here is the solar yield, the electrical yield over the course of today on the glass house at the big fruit farm. So this is really addictive data that comes out of these remote loggers every day, and we can do this on campus as well. So we have research students who are working on the project as well as the workers at the farm, and they're looking at the effect of light on more experimental plants on campus as well as this commercial set of plants at the farm. So the reason for this project is that farms need to reduce their carbon footprint, so they need to reduce the amount of fuel that they use and they want to get an electrical yield from solar panels so that they can run worker housing, irrigation, all of the automated systems that they have on farms. We're really interested in applying robotics more in farms, so hopefully if you've got all of these solar panels installed at a farm, you can use them for your many needs at the farm. The thing that's different about this grant is we're using transparent solar panels over glass houses or over polytunnels or on walls of glass houses, so we can see how you install them on structures that are already present so the farm doesn't have to buy a new glass house in order to have solar power on the farm. The University of Greenwich has a lot of plant growth expertise, crop expertise, and I kind of come in at the edge of this, at the photosynthesis side of things, so I'm really interested in the effect on plants of changing the conditions that they're grown in, but other people involved in the grant are really interested in the application of the solar panels and we have many members of staff who find this project useful and interesting because they want to apply post harvest technology, use the power from solar panels on the farm to do chitting or processing of foods.