The limits to capitalist nature: theorizing and overcoming the imperial mode of living by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen

Brand and Wissen’s book provides a highly welcome and engaging introduction to German political ecology and critical theory and their own contributions to it, which due to language barriers often remains overlooked in anglophone academia. The book traces current social and ecological crises back to the roots of capitalism, Fordism and post-Fordism, financialization, and now, finally, ‘green capitalism’, which, if successful, might temporarily ward off the great crash of capitalism, but ultimately keeps heading in the direction of crisis. The book’s main contribution is its introduction of the concept of the imperial mode of living. Brand and Wissen describe how ‘The mode of living in the global North is “imperial” inasmuch it is based on a principally unlimited appropriation to resources, space, territories, labour capacity and sinks elsewhere – secured politically, legally, and/or by means of violence’ (p.13). They continue to argue why ‘due to the imperial mode of living and its global spread, societies seem to be approaching the limits to capitalist nature’ (p.3). Similar arguments have long been made in Marxist analyses of ecological and social crises, but the book’s emphasis on the hegemonic embeddedness of this model in everyday life is a useful attempt to explain its pervasiveness and persistence. Though the book is overall an engaging read, the authors could have assumed less ‘Marxist literacy’ from its potentially broad audience.

The authors suggest we are currently at a crossroads. Around the globe, citizens and elites are responding to the approaching limits of capitalist nature, and arguably two options present themselves. On the one hand, the rise of the populist right responds by increasing militarization, securitization and xenophobia to defend the global North’s disproportionate claim to natural resources and the imperial mode of living (e.g. behind the walls of Fortress Europe). On the other hand, and this is where the book becomes a political pamphlet, we can choose to replace the imperial mode of living with a ‘solidarity mode of living’, referring to ‘patters of production and consumption and manifold social relations linked to them that no longer rest on the destruction of nature and exploitation of labour power’ (p.102).

In the final chapters – the main part of the book that was previously not available in English – Brand and Wissen explore how social movements and other progressive actors may advance this alternative mode of living. As a social movement scholar, I was most interested in this part of the book but it was the part I found least convincing. Harvey’s 2012 book Rebel Cities describes urban space as the frontier of capitalism and thus of resistance; similarly, Brand and Wissen depict capitalism’s exploitative valorization and financialization of nature and labour as a promising site to foster and unite resistance. Hence, they follow the Marxist tradition of depicting capitalist crises as promising sites for change – provided that progressive forces can exploit their potential. The authors find evidence in initiatives, including grassroots alternatives such as community gardens and car sharing, movements for food sovereignty and energy democracy, and resistance to large infrastructure projects. Whether or not these projects succeed in establishing solidarity as the dominant mode of living depends on their ability to unite these initiatives in a broad, anti-capitalist movement.

Here the book seems both overly optimistic and pessimistic: it praises progressive movements as emerging answers to the crisis, without asking why, throughout their decades’ long existence, they have remained so marginal, whilst raising the bar for success to a level of unity the history of social movements has by and large proven to be impossible. It is not that there is nothing new or promising in the initiatives depicted by the authors (there is plenty), nor that ‘the unity of the left’ is not an important issue but rather that their discussion remains superficial as they do not engage with the empirical reality of movements on the ground. Rather than using the structural necessity of resistance as proof of its immanence, the discussion should look at why movements sometimes do or do not manage to mobilize such ‘obvious’ struggles, what strategic dilemmas and internal contradictions movements face, and what dynamics affect movements’ diffusion, (de-)politicization and integration.

Surely, these questions lie beyond the reach of any single volume. Still, it is disappointing that after painting a historical-materialist context to understand the emergence of some of today’s progressive (and reactionary) movements, the book does not further engage with the empirical reality of social movements. The book thus underlines the importance of bringing critical theory and social movement studies closer together by itself failing to do so.