How Should We Understand the Anthropocene? Critical Realism, Dialectical Materialism, and the Problem of the Subject

In this study, I seek an answer to the question of how we should understand the Anthropocene from a critical realist-materialist perspective. My aim is to reveal a number of problems in the Marxist literature, taking into account the Anthropocene debates that have been going on for nearly two decades. It is stated that with the Anthropocene, humanity made radical changes in the environmental parameters of the earth, and that humanity no longer lives in the Holocene, but in a new geological age. However, it can be said that the Anthropocene has become a political concept. It is claimed that anthropocentrism is brought to the fore with the concept and all (homogeneous) humanity is held responsible for the global ecological destruction. For this reason, some Marxist ecology thinkers have proposed the concept of Capitalocene (capital-centrism), arguing that the concept obscures the effect of capitalist capital relations on nature. In this work, I argue that the focus of the discussion should be shifted from anthropocentrism or capital-centrism? to a critical realist and dialectical materialist (relationalist approach that emphasizes the ontological primacy of nature). Such an approach has the capacity to reveal which Marxist ecology approach to overcoming destruction is more satisfactory while accepting the political aspect of the Anthropocene concept. I argue that such an approach will provide an opportunity to evaluate the importance and limitations of the working classes and class struggle as a historical, social and political subject in the face of ecological destruction.