Pregledni rad
https://doi.org/10.17234/SocEkol.25.1.6
Anthropocene – What End of Capitalism?
Matko Meštrović
; Ekonomski institut, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Around two hundred years ago marked the beginning of the geological era characterized by significant human impact on the ecosphere, recently scientifically termed the Anthropocene. Therefore, the question of the relationship between natural sciences and power, culture and humanistic thought needs to be addressed. The world can no longer be observed as a thing in itself, an equilibrium, or as a way of defining what is human, historical or social (Wark, 2015). The characteristics of this “human dominated” geological era should be reconsidered in relation to capitalist forms of social relations. We are talking about the kind of society in which the dominant relation between people is materialistic in nature while the relation between material things is social, and in which the circulation of money as capital is a purpose in itself. The subject is no longer the human (nor the ruling elite) but the capital (Cunha, 2015).
Science is so closely intertwined with value-loaded assumptions that it began to view the Anthropocene as something more or different from its scientific term, to such an extent that it is no longer even clear what is meant by it. Defining the contemporary moment as transhistorical Anthropocene, without differentiating between the societies geographically or socially, is really only justifiable if we hold that our current predicament is fundamentally a consequence of our biology (Baskin, 2014). The narrative about the geological impacts of humanity draws attention away from the key issues of power, geopolitics and the legacy of imperialism. And it is precisely these factors that have produced the world in which the distribution of burdens and benefits is so deeply and unjustly distorted. The causes of global environmental changes are sociogenetic not anthropogenetic. Therefore, the term Anthropocene in itself can neither provide an explanation for the ecological crisis nor can it be the recipe for overcoming it (Eckersley, 2015). The forms of consciousness shaped by the capital, or so-called “objective forms of thought”, will not deteriorate on their own. As we reach the upper limits of capitalism, strong tensions arise, reflected in the inability to continue with its realistic valorisation because of the collective consciousness that internalized capitalistic ways of existence and cannot (or will not) imagine any other forms of living (Kurz, 2011).
This paper discusses several assumptions that can be used to approach the question from the title in order to reveal the Anthropocene in all its multivocality. The assumptions presented in this paper are implicit in nature and their relationships should be further and more fully researched in the future.
Ključne riječi
Anthropocene; transhistory; sociogenetics; anthropogenetics; social fetishism
Hrčak ID:
178368
URI
Datum izdavanja:
26.3.2017.
Posjeta: 2.969 *