Dialectics Without Destiny: Marx, Darwin, and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis

Rev Left Radio

Breht O'Shea

Philosophy, Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2026

⏱️ 126 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we're joined by professor Joel Wainwright (co-author of Climate Leviathan) to discuss his newest book, The End: Marx, Darwin, and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis. Together, Breht and Joel explore the intellectual impact Charles Darwin had on Karl Marx, and why it matters for the ecological crisis of our time. Wainwright argues that Marx's study of Darwin helped him develop a distinctly Marxian concept of natural history, reshaping how he understood history, nature, and capitalism itself. Reading Capital through this lens, they unpack how Marx's critique becomes an ecological critique: capitalism as a social formation that reorganizes the human–Earth relation, producing crisis, "surplus" populations, and new forms of domination - and have some fun disagreements along the way. They close by asking what this natural-historical Marx can contribute to building an eco-socialist alternative beyond capitalist growth and climate catastrophe.

Check out Breht and Alyson's previous episode on Climate Leviathan HERE

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon

Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio

Follow RLR on IG HERE

Learn more about Rev Left HERE

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio.
0:08.4	On today's episode, we have a really fascinating, wide-ranging conversation.
0:11.6	I know I say that a lot, but it's true a lot.
0:13.7	This is the author Joel Wainwright, the author, the scholar from OSU.
0:19.1	He wrote with a co-author, the book Climate Leviathan, which longtime listeners of Red Menace and Rev.
0:24.4	Left might remember.
0:25.4	Allison and I basically did a whole episode on that book, explained it, reflected on it, etc.
0:31.6	He's come out now, or Joel has come out now with his newest book just released through Verso a couple months ago called The End, Marks, Darwin, and the Natural History of the Climate Crisis.
0:44.1	Really bringing together Darwin and Marx who were alive at the same time, doing work at the same time.
0:50.8	Marks, when Darwin dropped on the origin of species, marks in angles immediately, as I've said
0:56.9	many times, saw this as in line with what their project and reached out to Darwin, wrote a
1:02.5	very flattering letter.
1:03.5	Darwin wrote back writing flattering stuff about Marx.
1:06.7	Marks, of course, was in London at that time where Darwin was, so he was in the sort of
1:11.0	cultural milieu of the impact of Darwin's work.
1:14.6	And so what Joel does is he takes this historical meeting and he really drives home the
1:20.9	Darwinian impact on Marx's thinking post-1860 in his later more mature work and particularly in capital to
1:30.3	kind of put pressure on some orthodoxies that may be outdated and to kind of talk about
1:36.7	Marx's understanding of capitalism and modes of production as a form of natural history,
1:42.7	which we'll get into if that doesn't make intuitive sense to you up front.
1:46.3	We get into that.
1:47.3	So we kind of talk about Darwinian anti-teleology.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Breht O'Shea, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Breht O'Shea and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.