Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

While the American and Chinese disposition to all things “Marxism” may seem radically different on the surface, Marx’s iconic recognition nonetheless offers an opportunity like no other to fortify the pursuit of capital against the encroaching implications of climate change. Indeed, it is precisely because climate change presents a potentially irrecoverable environmental crisis that the disregard of mounting evidence demands an equally potent pretext. Marx, I’ll argue, provides just that pretext. Weaponized as the enemy of free markets or deified as the hero the worker’s state, “Marxism” provides the ideological pretext for maintaining the myth of inexhaustible resources. Whether cast as the foe of “Making America Great, Again!” job creation in the manufacturing or mining sectors of the U.S. economy, or as the champion of Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream, whether as foil or inspiration, a suitably retrofitted Marxism has been deployed by both Trump and Xi to legitimate unsustainable economic policies. However otherwise different, each leader personifies what I will call the new fascism: confronted with an existential threat the magnitude of climate change, both will reach for the most effective, ideologically reliable tool at their disposal to help dispel the growing recognition that the conquest of capital is responsible for climate change: “Marx.”