Introduction

The discourse surrounding the contemporary ecological crisis has outgrown the traditional boundaries of environmental science, transforming into a profound debate over human rights and the structural foundations of global capitalism. At the center of this debate is the designation of our current geological era. While the term "Anthropocene" has gained widespread scientific and cultural acceptance, it has faced intense scrutiny from critical theorists for its universalising implications.

This article investigates the theoretical friction between two divergent critiques of the Anthropocene. On one side, Kohei Saito revitalises historical materialism, arguing that the crisis is fundamentally rooted in a "metabolic rift" driven by capitalist accumulation. He advocates for a macro-structural overhaul through degrowth communism. On the other side, Donna Haraway employs a post-structuralist lens to dismantle the universal "Anthropos," proposing the "Capitalocene" and "Plantationocene" to expose the specific historical systems of extraction. Haraway urges a shift toward the "Chthulucene," an epoch defined by micro-political, multispecies assemblages rather than human exceptionalism.

Despite their divergent epistemologies, Saito’s structural eco-Marxism versus Haraway’s relational post-humanism, both frameworks converge in their diagnosis of structural violence against the global peripheries. This article critically analyses how both models perceive the exploitation of the Global South, demonstrating that the burden of the ecological crisis is disproportionately borne by marginalised communities and ecosystems. By placing these theories in dialogue, this article aims to provide a robust theoretical foundation for eco-social justice that addresses both the macro-economics of global extraction and the intimate, localised assemblages of multispecies survival.

The Anthropocene and the Metabolic Rift: Capitalism’s Endless Accumulation

The widespread adoption of the term "Anthropocene" signifies a paradigm shift in understanding human agency: humanity is no longer merely an inhabitant of the Earth, but a geological force capable of altering the planet's biophysical systems. However, as Kohei Saito meticulously outlines in his eco-Marxist framework, framing this crisis as a generic human failing conceals the specific political-economic system responsible for the devastation: capitalism.

Saito’s critique is anchored in a re-reading of Karl Marx’s unpublished ecological notebooks, from which he extracts the concept of the "metabolic rift". In pre-capitalist societies, there existed a relatively stable, though imperfect, metabolic interaction between human labour and the natural environment. Capitalism, driven by the imperative of infinite accumulation on a planet with finite limits, violently severs this organic metabolism. The logic of capital treats nature not as a complex web of life to be sustained, but as a "free gift", a boundless stockpile of cheap energy and raw materials, and an endless sink for its waste.

Within the Anthropocene, this metabolic rift has reached a planetary scale. Saito argues that the technological optimism often accompanying Anthropocene discourse, namely the belief that geoengineering, green capitalism, or carbon capture can resolve the crisis, is a dangerous illusion. These "green" solutions merely shift the burden, creating new frontiers of extraction and perpetuating the underlying logic of the treadmill of production. Capitalism cannot solve the ecological crisis because capitalism is the crisis; its core DNA requires the continuous commodification of both human labour and non-human nature.

To resolve this, Saito proposes a radical macro-economic restructuring: degrowth communism. This is not to be confused with a romanticised return to pre-industrial poverty, nor is it the "happy degrowth" of mainstream environmentalism. Instead, Saito’s framework is a rigorously structural proposition. It demands the democratic expropriation of the means of production, the deliberate scaling down of ecologically destructive industries, the reduction of working hours, and the de-commodification of essential human needs such as housing, healthcare, and water. By transitioning these resources back into the realm of the "commons," society can re-establish a rational, conscious, and sustainable metabolism with the Earth. For Saito, the subject of this transformation remains rooted in the traditional Marxist ontology: it is the global working class, allied with climate justice movements, who must seize the political and economic machinery to halt the capitalist engine.

Beyond the Anthropos: Haraway’s Capitalocene and the Chthulucene

If Saito seeks to radicalise the Anthropocene by inserting a Marxist structural critique, Donna Haraway seeks to abolish the term entirely. For Haraway, words are world-making; the terminology we use dictates the solutions we are capable of imagining. Blaming a universal "Anthropos" (Humanity) for the destruction of the biosphere is an act of historical erasure. It flattens the vast disparities in power, wealth, and ecological footprint, implying that the indigenous populations of the Amazon share the same geological guilt as the executives of fossil fuel corporations.

To correct this, Haraway adopts and expands the term "Capitalocene," originally coined by Andreas Malm and Jason W. Moore. The Capitalocene correctly identifies that the current mass extinction and climate collapse were not caused by human nature, but by a specific, historically situated system of power: a "world-ecology" built on the extraction of cheap nature, cheap labour, and the violent expropriation of land.

Furthermore, Haraway introduces the concept of the "Plantationocene" to emphasise that the roots of modern ecological devastation precede the industrial revolution. The blueprint for capitalist extraction was forged in the colonial plantations of the long sixteenth century. The Plantationocene relies on the forced alienation of plants, animals, and human beings (via chattel slavery) from their complex local ecologies, reducing them to interchangeable, scalable commodities. It is the violent simplification of diverse ecosystems into monocultures for maximum yield.

However, Haraway refuses to stop at a mere critique of capital. She argues that both the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene are narratives of inevitable apocalypse; they are stories that end in ruin. In response, she formulates the "Chthulucene", a present and future epoch characterised by the urgent need to "stay with the trouble." Rejecting both techno-utopianism and paralysing despair, the Chthulucene demands that we live and respond within the damaged, muddy reality of our current world.

Crucially, Haraway’s political ontology is fundamentally post-structuralist. She rejects the Cartesian dualism of "Man vs. Nature" and the Marxist ambition to "rationally manage" the environment. Drawing heavily on the concept of assemblages, she argues that humans have never been autonomous actors; we are "holobionts," entirely co-constituted by our relationships with bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals. There is no human life without these multispecies entanglements.

Therefore, Haraway’s political imperative is "sympoiesis" (making-with). Instead of a macro-economic revolution led by a unified working class, Haraway envisions emancipation through situated, micro-political practices. Her provocative slogan, "Make kin, not babies," is a call to dismantle the normative boundaries of the biological, patriarchal family. She urges the formation of radical, non-genealogical alliances across species lines such as networks of care, restoration, and mutual survival in the ruins of capitalist extraction.

Peripheral Sacrifices: Unequal Exchange and the Plantationocene in the Global South

While Saito and Haraway operate on vastly different epistemological planes, the former relies on macro-economics while the latter on micro-relations, their theories intersect most powerfully in their analysis of the Global South. Both scholars recognise that the ecological crisis is fundamentally an issue of structural human rights violations, wherein the prosperity of the core is subsidised by the devastation of the periphery.

In Saito’s framework, the exploitation of the Global South is understood through the lens of "unequal ecological exchange" and the "imperial mode of living." The metabolic rift is not evenly distributed. To maintain its high standards of living and endless growth, the capitalist core (the Global North) must continuously externalise its ecological costs onto the peripheries. This dynamic transforms the Global South into both a limitless source of raw materials, such as lithium in Latin America or cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a vast dumping ground for toxic waste and carbon emissions.

Saito argues that capitalism solves its localised crises of resource depletion by executing a "spatial fix." When soil is exhausted or labor becomes too expensive in one region, capital simply relocates its destructive operations to more vulnerable territories. The Anthropocene, therefore, is characterised by a violent multi-level governance failure, where international trade agreements and transnational corporations systematically strip the Global South of its ecological wealth while trapping it in cycles of debt and underdevelopment. The climate crisis faced by the peripheries is not an accidental byproduct; it is the prerequisite for the core’s accumulation.

Haraway approaches the same geography of exploitation through the lens of the Plantationocene and situated assemblages. For Haraway, the devastation of the Global South is not merely an economic transfer of resources; it is an ontological violence that destroys complex, multispecies lifeways. The expansion of global capital, whether through palm oil plantations in Indonesia or massive agribusiness in the Amazon, operates by obliterating local, indigenous epistemologies and replacing them with sterile, scalable monocultures.

Haraway’s analysis emphasises that the victims of this extraction are not solely the human workers, but the entire "kinship" network of an ecosystem. The Plantationocene severs the relational ties between indigenous communities, their ancestral lands, and the non-human species they coexist with. Consequently, resistance in the Global South cannot be understood solely as a traditional class struggle. It manifests as a defense of territory, biodiversity, and indigenous rights; a fight to protect what Deleuze and Guattari would term the complex "assemblages" of life against the homogenising machine of global capital.

Where Saito sees the necessity for a unified, global working-class movement to seize the means of production, Haraway highlights the agency of the marginalised, the indigenous, and the non-human. She elevates the localised struggles in the Global South as the true sites of "sympoiesis", places where activists, scientists, and local communities are actively inventing new ways to heal the soil, protect water rights, and forge alliances that defy capitalist logic. Both perspectives ultimately reveal that eco-social justice is impossible without dismantling the structural exploitation of the global peripheries, demanding a profound reckoning with colonial legacies.

Conclusion

The theoretical tension between Kohei Saito and Donna Haraway illustrates the complexity of the contemporary eco-social crisis. Saito provides an indispensable macro-structural critique, demonstrating that the "metabolic rift" and the imperial extraction of the Global South are inescapable requirements of capitalist accumulation. His call for degrowth communism offers a systemic blueprint for dismantling the economic engines of ecological collapse. Conversely, Haraway exposes the limitations of anthropocentric, totalising narratives. By introducing the Capitalocene and Chthulucene, she shifts the focus toward relational ontologies and multispecies assemblages, reminding us that survival requires micro-political practices of care, situated knowledge, and the forging of new kinships.

Achieving genuine inclusion and eco-social justice requires navigating the space between these two paradigms. Saito’s structural analysis is necessary to dismantle the unequal ecological exchange that ravages the peripheries, while Haraway’s post-humanist ethics are vital for imagining how we might rebuild and "stay with the trouble" in the ruined landscapes left behind. Together, they confirm that the fight for the climate is simultaneously a fight for human rights, demanding both the overthrow of extractive economies and the cultivation of profound, multispecies solidarities.

References

Haraway, Donna J. "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin." Environmental Humanities 6, no. 1 (2015): 159–65.

Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.

Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso Books, 2015.

Moore, Jason W., ed. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016.

Saito, Kohei. Karl Marx's Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017.

Saito, Kohei. Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Saito, Kohei. Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. Translated by Brian Bergstrom. New York: Astra House, 2024.