Albert’s book is a timely read. Only one week into Trump’s second term he seems determined to enact policies that will exacerbate every problem that Albert examines: climate change, fossil fuel extraction, pandemic readiness, economic competition, international political tensions, and the future of armed violence. Trump, delusional in his emperor’s new clothes, appears to think that viruses and atmospheric chemistry obey Executive Orders and that the historical forces that have slowly but steadily eroded American power since the triumphant days at the end of the Cold War can be arrested because one-third of American voters cast their ballot for him. Material and historical reality will not be cheated by Trump’s arrogance, but he can expedite the most destructive implications of those forces by his reactionary policy. Whether the world proves up to the task of confronting and stopping him before the end of his term remains to be seen. But that he will exacerbate the contradictions of the international system is almost certain.

Albert argues that the world is in the midst of an intensifying polycrisis. The term was coined by former European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker to explain the political, economic, and cultural problems faced by the EU. Albert applies it globally, to the multiple intersecting crisis of what he calls the “world-earth” system. The polycrisis is a “nexus of entwined crises characterized by feedback loops, blurred boundaries, cascade effects, and in many cases mutual amplification.” (2) The global system is confronted with a series of problems of reproduction on multiple levels and scales, from the availability of energy sources, to the climate, unstable hydrological cycles, a food system challenged by scarce land and high emissions, the threat of new information technologies, intensifying political-economic conflicts, and new means of violence in the hands of state and non-state actors. “The planetary polycrisis can be understood as a protracted phase of critical transition and turbulence that is unfolding simultaneously across multiple sub-systems of the world-earth system– from political economy and finance to climate, biodiversity, energy, food, disease, global security, and identity.”(19) Each of these systems interact in ways that can either exacerbate degenerative or catalyze regenerative trends.

Albert situates himself in the tradition of the Club of Rome’s celebrated and vilified Limits to Growth report of 1974 (updated, 2004) (64-5). Against the tide of criticism that the report initially received, Albert argues that the quantitative futures modelling that the report pioneered is an essential part of ecological, social, political, and economic problem solving. While he notes that models are generic maps that cannot provide clairvoyant foresight, we need them in order to understand where the world might be going, and where we might best try to steer it. Albert is neither a technotopian nor a catastrophist: he has a political agenda but he does not let that agenda skew his reading of the data. He is confident that, in principle, human beings have the political and scientific intelligence and practical and technological know-how to solve the polycrisis, but he notes that even the best case scenarios will take decades to implement and that even our best efforts might not be sufficient to avoid the worst case scenario.

Albert begins by noting that there is an unfortunate gap between qualitative social criticism on one side and quantitative scientific modelling on the other. He argues that social scientists, Marxists, and philosophers need to pay much greater attention to problems studied by “the earth system sciences, energy studies, ecological economics,, and other fields that highlight the geophysical parameters that will constrain possible futures of capitalism.” (9) Albert is correct to single out for criticism in this regard utopian socialists like Aaron Bastani whose “fully automated luxury communism” completely ignores the constraints of material reality. The capacity to extrapolate technological fixes from existing capacities is one thing, but actually scaling those technologies up or realizing their idealized potentials is quite another. One can imagine that we can mine asteroids and genetically engineer future human beings with superhero powers, but the technoptopian imagination cannot prove that their fantasy solutions will work or guarantee that they will not create even worse problems.

Albert’s critique of technotopian hand-waving is welcome, as his much needed critique of the creeping idealism of much of the Left and the ambivalent or even anti-scientific attitude that underlies the argument that science is just one narrative amongst many and that objective, material reality is a social construction all the way down. When material reality confronts those same leftists with objective threats to life– a pandemic or anthropogenic climate change– suddenly material reality becomes relevant again. Social constructivist critics of science are thus forced into ad hoc cherry picking of results: climate science and vaccines good, the bio-medical science of sex and evolutionary theory bad. But the same evolutionary theory that explains the reality and importance of biological sex in the development of the large brains that can invent social constructivism underlies the research that led to mRNA vaccines that helped fight COVID. It is true that natural science cannot solve social problems– only changed social practices can do that. But it can– and Albert shows how– help us understand that any social system is going to have to contend with physical forces that social theory cannot deconstruct.

Albert thus aims to synthesis the power of quantitative modelling with the Marxist critique of capitalism to defend an eco-socialist future as the best– most ecologically sound and socially just– future system. But he is clear-eyed about the impediments to that future. The primary impediment is the political organization of a global movement capable of supplanting right-wing populist and technocratic defenders of capitalism. But even if an eco-socialist movement is politically successful it will still face the intersecting and interacting material problems caused by the planetary system. If population continues to grow in that eco-socialist future, for example, then economies will have to grow too. If economies and populations continue to grow then energy demand will continue to rise, food demand will rise, and neighbouring socialist communities could still find themselves in conflict over lands, resources, or water. Successful solutions to these problems do not follow from the fact of worker and community control over the means of production. Albert rightly criticizes Marxists for typically underplaying the challenges posed by material scarcity and unintended consequences of different technical fixes.(78-9)

The great merit of the book is that Albert handles the empirical and disciplinary complexity of the argument and presents the different scenarios he maps with enough detail and dynamism that the reader begins to see the complex interactions between the variables without getting lost in the particulars and losing the all important sense of direction that his mappings are supposed to provide. He imagines different scenarios but ensures that the reader can always identify the through line of argument, what he calls the “planetary problematic. “The planetary problematic is the nexus of intersecting problems that impels and constrains the self-organization of the world-earth system, creating a possibility space composed of not-yet actual trajectories, attractors, and bifurcations within them.” (94) I did find his use of technical terms from the the language of the mathematics of chaos and complexity theory (attractor, dissipative structure, etc.) clashed with the narrative organization of the argument. Unless one is going to provide actual mathematical models there is no reason to apply terms like “attractor” to possible forms of social stability. An attractor is an emergent equilibrium towards which a chaotic state tends. History does not spontaneously tend towards an equilibrium state: social solutions must be argued over, fought for, and imposed.

That said, I was nevertheless impressed at the lucidity of his presentation of the complex ways in which attempts to solve one problem can exacerbate problems in another dimension. The issue of complex interactions cannot be solved by simply asserting that society is a totality and that a change in social relations will by its nature solve everything. Albert rejects the Hegelian-Marxist notion of totality because it is simplistic. Instead he turns to the idea of an “assemblage.” The term derives from the work of Gilles Deleuze, but Albert adopts the interpretation of Miguel Delanda. (89) He uses it to express the fact that elements of a system “are not logically coherent networks of ideas and beliefs … but rather looser configurations that nonetheless tend to produce distinctive patterns of thinking and feeling.”(106). Each facet of the polycrisis has its own structure and exerts its own forces, but that structure and those forces are also effected by changes to other independent but connected variables. Thus, “we confront a predicament that is more than the sum of its parts– a multiplicity of intersecting crises that should be studied as holistically as possible in order to illuminate its possible futures.” (61)

Navigating the polycrisis is therefore fraught with unintended consequences. The secular stagnation of the economy might be overcome by a new technological breakthrough, but that breakthrough might endanger lives and civil liberties if it emerges from an unregulated AI industry. The food crisis can be solved by increasing production, but increasing production can exacerbate the extinction crisis by converting more land to agricultural use, depriving species of their habitats. Economic growth might exacerbate the ecological crisis, but economic contraction can strengthen right-wing forces and intensify geo-political conflict. Massive investment in renewable energy might accelerate ‘Green” growth” and reduce carbon levels, but it might also generate competitive scrambles for rare earth materials. By mapping these interactions carefully, Albert hopes to improve the quality of political struggle and public policy, all the while noting, with appropriate modesty, that the complexity of material reality exceeds even the most detailed mapping exercize.

A notable strength of the book is that Albert connects his political-economic and ecological analysis to the all-important existential dimension of life. Crises are periods of change and transition, but periods of change and transition are also periods of intense anxiety. Some can resolve their anxieties by working to solve the problems, but others (a plurality, at the moment, in the United States and Europe, at least), try to recover meaning by embracing, often violently, a nostalgic interpretation of the past. Albert understands that life needs purposes as well as calories, and that the absence of purpose can cause people to lash out against the forces that they fear are threatening old certainties. It is not simply irrationality, stupidity, or xenophobia that motivates so many people to embrace simplistic right-wing populist slogans. Underneath those movements lies real insecurity and vulnerability. “The Existential problematic refers to the problem of creating forms of collective meaning, identity, and belonging.” It receives “less attention,” Albert notes, but “it is nevertheless essential to include it” because the navigation of the polycrisis requires political action and political motivations are shaped by the existential problematic.(105-6) I agree that this problematic is the most difficult to solve, but I would add that an effective solution must go deeper than merely countering right-wing populism with a politically effective left-wing populist movement. Ultimately, a solution to the existential problematic requires a value system that affirms finite earthly life as the ultimate value. Albert’s argument could have benefited from more systematic attention to the nature of life as the ultimate value. His argument presupposes that principle but he does not examine the different forms of life-value or provide a criterion (such as the ‘primary axiom of value’ developed in the work of John McMurtry) to distinguish life-coherent from life-destructive existential dispositions and value-systems.

Albert’s most detailed analyses are reserved for the exploration of how different ways of resolving one dimension of the polycrisis might affect other dimensions under different social regimes. He first examines how different strategies of system-management and change might operate in the socio-ecological and political-military subsystems, asking how different policy regimes– business as usual, Green Keynesianism, and different varieties of eco-socialist transition– will handle problems thrown up by climate change, resource scarcity, food supply, energy mix, and existential crises. Each solution has political and military implications: trying to hang on to old patterns of fossil fuel driven economic growth will intensify competition between states and increase the likelihood of military conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. However, Albert is careful to note that not every version of eco-socialism entails harmonious and non-violent global relationships. Some versions could see eco-socialist societies try to wall themselves off from others, while frustrated activists might adopt uncompromising, violent means of struggle (which would likely be met with severe police and military repression). While some of his political-military scenarios resemble a dystopic science fiction movie, none are completely adventitious but all are grounded in existing political tendencies and technological possibilities.

The book concludes with seven global outcomes of the polycrisis. He does not assign probabilties to the seven possibilities but sketches the trajectories that would lead to system-breakdown, neo-feudalism, volatile techno-leviathan, stable techno-leviathan, ecomodernist socialism, fortress degrowth, or abolitionist ecosocialism (226, 228-235).

I will not reconstruct these scenarios in any detail but simply note the distinguishing features of each. System-breakdown would occur if the world continues to try to save fossil fuel driven capitalism. In that case collapse– “irreversible breakdown in the structures, relations, and feedbacks that previously reproduced a particular socio-economic system, resulting in a new equillibrium that is less “complex” (147) might prove unavoidable. Collapse would not necessarily mean human extinction — society could could eventually be reconstructed, as feudalism reconstructed organized social life after the collapse of the Roman Empire– but it cannot be ruled out, either.

The other trajectories that Albert charts are attempts to stave off collapse through varying degrees of social regulation and change which rely on various degrees of consent or coercion. Albert calls the second worst case “neo-feudalism.” Neo-feudalism would be a response to a near-collapse scenario in which various forms of collective agents try to seal themselves off from the most destructive effects of the crisis. The nation state form might break down into smaller constituencies, some managed by private corporate powers, but all bent on maintaining elite lifestyles for the ruling class. (229)

The next two scenarios: stable and volatile ‘techno-leviathan’ are closer to existing patterns of nationalist retrenchement behind more ruthlessly enforced borders. Trump 2.0 prefigures in some respects what techno-leviathan might look like. In both scenarios, new surveillance and military technologies are used to police and repress restive populations. Intensifying food, climate, and economic crises combined with political resistance to structural change lead ruling classes to adopt a Hobbesian solution to social conflict. States increase their monopoly on the means of violence in order to better stamp out dissent. In the stable scenario nation states are able to manage internal and external conflict and maintain economic growth (whose fruits are appropriated by the wealthy); in the volatile variant internal and external conflicts predominate. Although surveillance and population control technologies would manage dissent and resistance, a significant segment of the population might consent to increased repression if it meant they were able to maintain their high-levels of consumption.(229-232)

The final set of scenarios would require significant degrees of structural and normative transformation. While these are generally more hopeful, none but the final– abolitionist eco-socialism– are without political dangers. Albert calls the first more hopeful trajectory ecomodernist socialism. In this variant fossil fuels are gradually phased out and renewable energy and the continued growth of digital technologies drives on-going economic growth. Albert speculates (not unreasonably, given the levels of investment in renewable energy) that China could lead this development. He labels the second hopeful the scenario ‘fortress degrowth.’ In this case some states complete the energy transition and create a steady-state economy, but try to reserve the benefits of those transformations for their own citizens. Right-wing or even eco-fascist variants cannot be excluded (although he notes that most eco-socialists would refuse to call fortress de-growth eco-socialist if it tends in a politically repressive direction) (233-34).

The final scenario is the most utopian: a complete democratic eco-socialist society in which the different structures of oppression and violent domination are overcome, a cooperative international order is achieved, ecological pressure on the earth’s life-support systems is relaxed, technology is utilized to better satisfy human needs and free life-time from alienated labour. Albert again displays admirable restraint by not predicting that such a future is certain or even likely. Even if it is possible to achieve, he cautions– rightly– that romantic versions of “revolution or bust” politics will not advance the cause. If it comes about, it will only be through decades of gradual struggle that focuses on achieving certain mediating plateaus (Guaranteed Basic Income, freedom from fossil fuels, etc) which make the climb to the next peak concretely possible.

In the abolitionist eco-socialist society “serving life and reducing suffering is an end in itself.” (241) Here the need to cash out this platitude makes itself felt: what does it mean to serve life as an end in itself? Does it mean to strive to create as many life-forms as possible given finite carrying capacity of the earth? What happens when the demands of human life conflict with the demands of other life forms, as they presumably will given finite space in every imaginable social scenario? As for human life, what are the limits to individual self-realization, given the reality of other people’s interests and needs? If Albert is correct (and I think that he is) and progressive political struggles must think systematically about the future, then it follows by the same reasoning that they cannot rest content with slogans about the intrinsic value of life, but must also explicate what that means concretely, given the material, social, and existential realities of life on earth under all social configurations.

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