In a world careening towards climate chaos, nature is dead. It can no longer be separated from society. Everything is a blur of hybrids, where humans possess no exceptional agency to set them apart from dead matter. But is it really so? In this blistering polemic and theoretical manifesto, Andreas Malm develops a counterargument: in a warming world, nature comes roaring back, and it is more important than ever to distinguish between the natural and the social. Only with a unique agency attributed to humans can resistance become conceivable.
"As the global crisis grows, it is more important than ever to understand the complex relationship between society and nature, but much of what passes for environmental theory generates more confusion than insight. Andreas Malm has written another essential contribution to ecological Marxism, a brilliant and clearly written polemic that demolishes constructionism, hybridism, postmodernism and related academic fads, and defends historical materialism as the only credible alternative."
--Ian Angus, author of Facing the Anthropocene
"The Progress of This Storm is a furious defense of dialectical thought, and of historical materialism as the theoretical lens appropriate for viewing global warming in all its social and natural complexity."
--Michael Robbins, Bookforum
"The Progress of This Storm issues a welcome call to get serious about political agency."
--Alyssa Battistoni, Nation
"Andreas Malm has a deep understanding of climate change, writes clearly, and presents a useful overview of environmental thought. He also introduces some compelling concepts of his own, with provocative implications for political struggle ... [The Progress of This Storm] is genuinely stirring in his militant calls to action."
--Dayton Martindale, Boston Review
"Malm argues with impressive rigour and skill."
--New Socialist
"A powerful sketch of a political theory for a time of climate change."
--David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth