The End

Karl Marx wrote the most important critique of capitalism, Capital, in London during the 1860s, at the very moment that Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had shattered humanity’s conception of ourselves. In this path-breaking study, Joel Wainwright demonstrates that Capital was deeply influenced by Marx’s reading Darwin’s Origin of Species. Marx’s thinking about history and nature changed, generating his distinctive ecological critique of capitalism as a social formation. This is why Marx called Capital a study of natural history and the book concludes, of all things, by proposing a new scientific law of human population.
Prospect of an End 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? When did the Anthropocene begin? And how might we confront the planetary climate crisis?

Author Biography

Joel Wainwright is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University, where he teaches political economy and climate politics. He is the author of Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya, which won the Blaut Award; Geopiracy: Oaxaca, Militant Empiricism, and Geographical Thought; Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of our Planetary Future, with Geoff Mann, which won the Sussex Prize for International Theory; and coeditor of Israel/Palestine: Marxist Interpretations.