The Anti-Oligarchic Swerve: Dynamic Materialism and Regenerative Politics

Seminar summary

Capitalism in the 21st century, based on global extractivism and profit, is fostered by the rule of law, both domestically, with constitutional rights to property and limitless accumulation of wealth, and internationally, with trade agreements enabling transnational corporations to claim compensations for regulatory changes affecting their projected profits. To properly study this type of structural domination and envision realist routes to more egalitarian societies, without alienation and exploitation, it is necessary to embrace a materialist method to study constitutions: the juridical mainframes that structure life in common. In this paper I revisit Marx’s conception of materialism by engaging with his most important source, Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, and focusing on the swerve, its relation to freedom, and the material constitution.

From this perspective, constitutional orders are sources of regularity created from a form of social consciousness at a given point, and, like every other established regularity, vulnerable to becoming formal straitjackets. Following the dynamic materialism he finds in Lucretius, Marx argues it is possible to create a constitutional order that could adapt to swerves, “advancing in step with real human beings —which is only possible when ‘man’ has become the principle of the constitution.” I argue that this merging of the “political” and “material” constitutions, which Marx calls a “true democracy,” is only possible if the people themselves are at the centre of decision making, speaking and acting in local councils and other counter-hegemonic spaces. Moreover, following John Bellamy Foster’s Lucretian interpretation of Marx’s materialism, I argue these spaces need to be conceived within radical ecological interconnectedness. Finally, I offer an interpretation of this dynamic ecological materialism from the viewpoint of plebeian republicanism and regenerative agriculture, and argue that if a swerve is going to be emancipatory and establish a material constitution, it must be decisively anti-oligarchic and anti-extractivist.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar will take place on Wednesday 7 February 2024 at 12pm.

We welcome you to join us online.

The seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

Speaker bio

Camila Vergara

Dr Camila Vergara is a Senior Lecturer at the Essex Business School, University of Essex. Camila joins the Business School to research and teach on systemic corruption, anti-oligarchic structures, & alternative forms of knowledge & organisation.