The End: Marx, Darwin, and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis

How Marx provides new insights into our environmental crisis when read alongside Darwin Karl Marx wrote the most important critique of capitalism, <i>Capital</i>, in London during the 1860s, at the very moment that Charles Darwin’s <i>On the Origin of Species</i> had shattered humanity’s conception of ourselves. In this path-breaking study, Joel Wainwright demonstrates that <i>Capital</i> was deeply influenced by Marx’s reading Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>. Marx’s thinking about history and nature changed, generating his distinctive ecological critique of capitalism as a social formation. This is why Marx called <i>Capital</i> a study of natural history and the book concludes, of all things, by proposing a new scientific law of human population.<br><br><i>The End</i> is not only a study in revolutionary 19th century thought. Wainwright applies Marx’s natural historical approach to some of the great questions of our time: How did capitalism emerge? How should we grasp human nature? And how might we confront the planetary climate crisis?

• | Author: Joel Wainwright
• | Publisher: Verso Books
• | Publication Date: Nov 25, 2025
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• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781804299418
• | ISBN-10: 1804299413