ABSTRACT
Earth is deeply bound up with the accumulation of capital, “the capitalist vortex.” We reshape Marxist economics to fully acknowledge how the web of life is fundamental to that vortex. Labour and extra-human nature are indelibly joined in producing “free gifts” of surplus, through three mechanisms (primitive accumulation, commodity production, and capitalization) and three geographic frontiers (extensive, internal, and intensive). Based on this, we provide tools to understand why capitalist growth has, for 500 years, meant inexorable devastation of natural resources and accompanying landscapes of profit. And why this cannot end without putting a stop to the vortex of accumulation.
