Reading Capital in an Age of Climate Change

While there is a robust and exploding literature on capitalism as the root cause of climate change, few have systematically explored Karl Marx’s most important finished work – Volume 1 of Capital – to bring to light the climate repercussions of capital’s “laws of motion.” Volume 1 is of special importance to a Marxist climate politics given the centrality of production in causing climate change itself. Matt Huber highlights the relevance to the climate crisis of key concepts such as value, the hidden abode of production, surplus-value, the accumulation of capital, primitive accumulation, and the expropriation of the expropriators.

Matt Huber is Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University and the author of two books, Climate Change as Class War and Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital.