“Notes on Exterminism” for the

Twenty-First-Century Ecology and

Peace Movement

John Bellamy Foster

In 1980, the great English historian and Marxist theorist E. P. Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class and leader of the European Nuclear Disarmament movement, wrote the pathbreaking essay “Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilisation.” Although the world has undergone a number of significant changes since, Thompson’s essay remains a useful starting point in approaching the central contradictions of our times, characterised by the planetary ecological crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, New Cold War, and current “empire of chaos”—all arising from features deeply embedded in the contemporary capitalist political economy.

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