Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz’s On the Emergence of an Ecological Class: A Memo (2022) offers an innovative response to the changing landscapes of contemporary political struggle. They argue that modern class dynamics—emerging historically from disputes over production and distribution—have become increasingly ineffective in addressing today’s ecological crises. In their view, a new "ecological class" must be formed, uniting people based on their relationships to terrestrial existence rather than traditional economic roles.

According to Latour, Marxism reveals its limitations by giving primacy to production relations while neglecting the spatial and ecological conditions that underlie all conflicts. As they write:

"Marxism demonstrates its weakness through its focus on production relations as the core source of conflict while ignoring the spatial conditions which establish the foundation for all conflicts" (Latour & Schultz, 2022, p. 18).

Latour’s methodological approach is evident here: instead of relying on abstract universalism, he emphasizes engendering—the creation of new conditions of being—and a sense of history rooted in material relationships rather than ideological advancement. Prosperity, for them, is reimagined not as endless growth, but as the flourishing of localized ecosystems.

While Latour and Schultz develop compelling conceptual frameworks, their project ultimately falters. By abstracting ecological subjectivity from capitalism, colonialism, racialization, and gendered labor, they overlook key structural dimensions of the crisis. A critical return to Marx’s ecological thought is therefore essential before embracing their invitation to move beyond Marxism—a critique they diminish too quickly.

In contrast to Latour’s depiction, Marxian materialism recognizes that human society exists through a dialectical, metabolic exchange (Stoffwechsel) with the Earth. In Capital, Marx examines how capitalist production ruptures this vital relationship, particularly through the widening divide between urban centers and rural areas. The extraction of soil fertility to feed urban industry depletes natural systems, disrupting the regenerative cycles that maintain ecosystems.

John Bellamy Foster (1999) revived this ecological dimension through his concept of the metabolic rift. Foster shows that capitalist production alienates humanity not only socially but ecologically, transforming nature into a field of commodified life. As Foster explains:

"Capitalism produces a rift in the metabolic interaction between humanity and the earth, a rupture that cannot be mended without transcending the capitalist system itself" (Foster, 1999, p. 380).

This rift is more than resource mismanagement; it is a structural consequence of capitalist relations that organize labor, privatize land, and treat nature as a limitless resource for accumulation.

Moreover, Foster (2010) stresses that repairing the metabolic rift requires more than cultural change or technical improvements. It demands a revolutionary reorganization of society’s relationship to nature, grounded in collective control over production and the conscious regulation of metabolic exchanges with the Earth. This is not simply an environmental project; it is a political and social one aimed at creating sustainable, democratic, and equitable forms of life.

Seen through this lens, Latour and Schultz’s redefinition of prosperity as thriving within limits echoes Marx’s critique of capitalist expansionism, but without confronting the systemic forces that compel societies to overshoot ecological boundaries. As Foster and Clark (2016) emphasize, Marx envisioned prosperity through sustainable, collective metabolic exchanges—prefiguring modern conceptions of ecological sustainability and social emancipation.

Geographer Katherine Yusoff (2018) expands this critique by illuminating how racialized histories of extraction underpin the Anthropocene itself. She writes:

"There is no Anthropocene without the plantationocene, without the calculus of racial capital and its grammar of extraction" (Yusoff, 2018, p. 13).

While Latour and Schultz propose territorial attachment as the new terrain of political conflict, they neglect to fully account for how colonialism and racial capitalism violently displaced Indigenous and Black communities from their lands. Without grappling with these histories, their vision of territoriality risks romanticizing belonging while erasing the structures of dispossession that shaped planetary relations.

An authentic ecological politics must engage with these layered and violent histories, not simply posit a generalized ecological subject.

Latour and Schultz also present engendering as a central political process—the ongoing production and reproduction of conditions of existence. Yet they fail to address the gendered and racialized dimensions of this process. Ecofeminists Maria Mies (1993) and Vandana Shiva (1988) have long argued that capitalist development rests on the violent appropriation of women's reproductive labor, Indigenous knowledge systems, and subsistence economies. Mies powerfully notes that capitalist prosperity depends on the "colonization of women, nature, and colonies."

Ecofeminist Ariel Salleh (1997) further emphasizes:

"Meta-industrial labor remains hidden from view because it sustains both human life and ecological systems" (Salleh, 1997, p. 19).

Without acknowledging the foundational role of reproductive and care labor, Latour and Schultz’s concept of "engendering" risks remaining an abstraction, disconnected from the material realities that make ecological and social life possible.

Anthropologist Anna Tsing’s (2015) multispecies ethnography adds yet another dimension to this critique. Tsing reminds us that flourishing in the ruins of capitalist extraction depends on precarious, multispecies entanglements. She writes:

"Precarity is the condition of our time. It is the condition of being vulnerable to others" (Tsing, 2015, p. 2).

While Latour and Schultz imagine new collective existences rooted in territorial attachment, they remain largely anthropocentric. A genuinely ecological politics must move beyond human-centered visions and recognize the co-creative survival strategies developed by fungi, trees, microbes, and other non-human actors.

The frameworks of Françoise Vergès (2021) and anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose (2011) further push toward a decolonial, multispecies ethic. Vergès argues that true environmental justice must be built:

"on the ruins of racial capitalism, not on its renovation" (Vergès, 2021, p. 78).

Meanwhile, Rose highlights Indigenous ethics of land and relationality, where stewardship and reciprocity—not ownership—govern the human relationship with the Earth. Unless Latour and Schultz center Indigenous epistemologies and histories of resistance, their emphasis on attachment risks reinforcing colonial property logics.

Environmental justice scholar Giovanna Di Chiro (1998) also reminds us that real ecological politics is rooted in grassroots, community-led struggles—often led by the very populations most affected by environmental injustice.

Taken together, these critiques reveal that while On the Emergence of an Ecological Class proposes a crucial reorientation, it lacks the structural depth necessary to catalyze true ecological transformation.

As Foster (2010) makes clear,

"the rational regulation of the metabolism between humanity and nature"
requires systemic, revolutionary change—not merely affective or ethical shifts.

The collective work of Yusoff, Mies, Shiva, Salleh, Tsing, Vergès, Rose, and Di Chiro highlights that a transformative ecological politics must dismantle capitalism, colonialism, racial hierarchies, and anthropocentric worldviews—not just adjust them.

In the end, On the Emergence of an Ecological Class stands as a valuable and imaginative provocation. Latour and Schultz succeed in foregrounding new terrains of political struggle and in emphasizing ecological embedment as a political necessity. Yet their vision remains limited—by its abstraction from capitalist and colonial violence, by its neglect of reproductive labor, and by its anthropocentric framing of ecological attachment.

A revolutionary ecological politics must integrate metabolic critique, racial capitalism, reproductive labor, Indigenous sovereignty, grassroots environmental justice, and multispecies solidarity.
Emerging movements like Land Back, Just Transition, and multispecies justice alliances already embody this kind of radical ecological reimagining—centering not only human survival, but the flourishing of all forms of life.

The task ahead is not merely to engender new attachments but to forge collective worlds capable of resisting extraction, repairing planetary wounds, and nurturing the conditions for life beyond ruin.

Footnotes

* The concept of the "metabolic rift" originates in Marx’s Capital (vol. 1, ch. 15), where he describes how capitalist agriculture disrupts the soil’s natural nutrient cycles. Foster’s reinterpretation (1999) revived this ecological dimension of Marx’s work, significantly influencing contemporary environmental sociology and political ecology.

** The term "Plantationocene," coined by Haraway, Tsing, McKittrick, and Yusoff, reframes the Anthropocene by highlighting how plantation economies—structured by monoculture, racialized labor, and extraction—produced the ecological conditions of the present crisis.

References

Di Chiro, G. (1998). Environmental justice from the grassroots: Reflections on history, gender, and expertise. In C. Gaard (Ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature (pp. 253–270). Temple University Press.

Foster, J. B. (1999). Marx’s theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 366–405. https://doi.org/10.1086/210315

Foster, J. B. (2010). Marx’s ecology in the 21st century. Retrieved from https://johnbellamyfoster.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2010_Marxs-Ecology-in-the-21st-Century.pdf

Foster, J. B., & Clark, B. (2016). Marx’s ecology and the left. Monthly Review, 68(2), 1–15. https://rowlandpasaribu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/john-bellamy-foster-2016-marxs-ecology-and-the-left.pdf

Latour, B., & Schultz, N. (2022). On the emergence of an ecological class: A memo. Polity Press.

Rose, D. B. (2011). Wild dog dreaming: Love and extinction. University of Virginia Press.

Salleh, A. (1997). Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx and the postmodern. Zed Books.

Shiva, V. (1988). Staying alive: Women, ecology and development. Zed Books.

Tsing, A. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.

Vergès, F. (2021). A decolonial feminism. Pluto Press.

Yusoff, K. (2018). A billion Black Anthropocenes or none. University of Minnesota Press.