Table Of ContentFUGITIVE POLITICS
Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology, between
the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges posed by
the global crisis, a dialectic which has rarely been addressed in academia.
Acrosseightchapters,CarlBoggsexploreshowsystemicchangemaybeachieved
within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within
nation-states.Boggsstatesthatanynotionofrevolutionseemsfancifulinthecurrent
climate,contendingthatcontrollingeliteshaveconcentratedtheirholdoncorporate
power along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech) and the surveillance
order, militarism and the warfare state, and intensification of globalized power.
Combined with this Boggs cites the fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-
forces, arguing that after decades of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity
politics and social movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted and
willnotprovideanexitfromthecrisis.Boggsconcludesthattheonlypossibilityfor
fundamentalchangewillcomefromanopenstyleofpolitics,intheJacobintradition,
operatingwithintheoverallstructuresofthecurrentdemocraticstate.
Written for both an academic and a general readership,intheU.S. andbeyond,
FugitivePoliticswillbeofvitalimportancetothosestudyingpoliticaltheory,political
philosophy, political history, Marxism and Marxist theory, authoritarian politics,
ecology,environmentalpolitics,andclimatepolitics.
CarlBoggshasbeenprofessorofsocialscienceatNationalUniversityinLosAngeles
formorethan30years.Hehaswritten25booksintheareasofcriticalsocialtheory,
Europeanpolitics,Americanpolitics,U.S.foreignandmilitarypolicy,andfilmstudies.
Forthepast25yearshehasbeenaregularcontributortotheonlinemagazineCoun-
terPunch. He is a member of the editorial boards of New Political Science, Theory and
Society, and the Global Studies Association. He is recipient of the Charles McCoy
AwardforcareerachievementfromtheAmericanPoliticalScienceAssociation.
“In Fugitive Politics, Boggs returns to his days as a campus radical, yolking together
twoinfluentialyetseeminglydisparatenarrativesinordertofashionafugitivepolitics
repurposed to challenge the misplaced ontological confidence of much of today’s
academicleft.Insodoingheprovesthattoday’salgorithmicunderstandingofpolitics
oftenservesasanontologicalblocktocapturingtheanalogueexperienceofpolitical
repression that Boggs and his contemporaries lived on a daily basis. Blending the
prehensive nature of political activism with his pathfinding theoretical work on
Gramsci,Lenin,and Marx, and hisprescientforaysinto ecosocialism, Boggscreates
newzonesofcontestation,sitesofscholarlyoutlawry,enclavesofpoliticalinsurgency
andfugitivedeploysthatareequippedtochallengethearcofhistoricalstrugglethat
could not be anticipated by the political sages of yesteryear. This book is vintage
Boggs,fearlessandforward-looking,atthecuttingedgeofthepoliticaldiscourseof
theday,abeaconoflightinthesedarktimes.”
Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies,
Chapman University, USA
FUGITIVE POLITICS
The Struggle for Ecological Sanity
Carl Boggs
Firstpublished2022
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utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
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Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent
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ISBN:978-1-032-05416-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-032-05414-8(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-003-19746-1(ebk)
DOI:10.4324/9781003197461
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
This book is dedicated to my Ventura College amici:
Anne, Bill C., Cyndie, Gerry, Jaimee, Julie, Kim, Michael W.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 Marxism and Early Capitalism 9
Marxism and Ecology 11
In Search of an Ecological Marx 12
Capitalism and the Natural World 16
2 Capitalism: From Marx to Weber 23
The Logic of Economic Rationalization 24
Modernity and State-Capitalism 30
The Rise of Corporate Globalization 34
The War on Nature 36
3 From Lenin to Gramsci 44
Breaking the Theoretical Impasse 44
The Retrieval of Politics 48
Marxism in History 49
The Problem of Revolution 52
Gramsci’s Jacobinism 56
viii Contents
4 Authoritarian State, Mass Society 63
Sources of Domination 63
Rise of the Authoritarian State 67
The Problem of Mass Culture 71
5 Mills: Beyond Marx and Weber 77
The Authoritarian State Revisited 79
The “Higher Immorality” 82
The Mass Society 86
6 Capitalism, Technology, Power 96
Capitalism and Technology 97
The McDonaldized Society 100
The Mass-Surveillance Order 102
Big Tech Oligarchy 108
7 The Military Behemoth 115
The New Imperial State 117
The Doomsday Threat 120
Permanent War? 124
The Age of Technowar 127
8 The Road to Ecosocialism? 133
The New Global Landscape 133
A Modern Jacobinsm? 137
Gramsci’s Politics Revisited 139
The Grand Illusion 141
Traversing the Modern Impasse 142
Sheldon Wolin: A Tribute 146
Index 151
PREFACE
The title of this book, Fugitive Politics, has its rather unusual origins in a bizarre
confluence of personal narratives – one going back to an intellectual mentor
during graduate-student years, the other involving a friend engaged in antiwar
politics at the time of the Vietnam War. The mentor was Sheldon Wolin, whose
last (and posthumous) book was titled Fugitive Democracy, a lengthy collection of
brilliant essays on political theorists ranging from Thomas Hobbes to Karl Marx,
Max Weber, the Frankfurt School, and more recent writers such as John Rawls.
AsprofessorofpoliticalscienceatU.C.,Berkeleyduringthe1960s,Wolinwould
exert a profound impact on my intellectual and political development extending
well past that turbulent decade. Fugitive Democracy would be the final work of a
prolific career that included such classics as Politics and Vision (1960) and Democ-
racy, Inc. (2007).
The activist friend is Howard Mechanic, author of the recently published The
Fugitive Candidate, which traces the lengthy history of Mechanic’s protests against
the Vietnam War as a student at Washington University in St. Louis (where I
taught in the 1970s), his improbable arrest and prison sentence, his underground
years in Arizona, his ultimate detection and arrest while running for Scottsdale
city council, and his final pardon in 2000 by President Bill Clinton. I was
honored to be able to write the foreword to Mechanic’s fascinating book, its
appearance coinciding with a documentary on his remarkable saga.
Viewed through the lens of both experiences, the term “fugitive” takes on
special meaning – simultaneously open-ended and transgressive, transitory and
exotic, fragmentary and radical. Put differently, the reference captures a dynamic
elementofpoliticsembedded inanongoing process ofdeconstruction, wherethe
outer surface of historical reality is increasingly penetrated and revealed. The
seminal though quite diverse contributions of Wolin and Mechanic would seem
